Hacking the PSP Blog

PSP makes a comeback

In a surprising turn of events, the PSP has beaten off the Wii and PS3, selling more than both consoles in Japan last week.

The latest weekly sales figures for Japan reveal that Sony's portable placed second in the hardware sales chart for the week ending 25 February, with unit sales of 96,750.

This falls short only of the still storming DS, which sold 146,250 units according to figures on vgcharts.org.

However the PSP beat even the might DS in the software sales chart in the same period, selling 808,750 games compared with 618,250 for the DS.

The surge could be put down to the recent release of Capcom's Monster Hunter Freedom 2, a co-op-enabled monster catching/battling game, which topped the software charts with a colossal 755,500 copies sold. Second down was Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Matsuri, with 90,500 sales.

Could this be the start of the revival of PSP?

Mike Jackson
March 1, 2007

Source: CVG

"Big" GDC announcement for Harrison

Phil Harrison's got a big announcement up his giant sleeve for next week's Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, according to Sony, which will be outlined in his keynote speech on Wednesday, 7th March, at 18:30 GMT.

"All I can say is we've said there's going to be a big announcement at GDC, and Phil's Keynote speech will form the basis of that," a spokesperson for Sony told Eurogamer this afternoon.

His talk will revolve around developing and creating games for the third age of videogames, delving into the meaning of "always on", and the opportunities presented by connected communities of players and developers.

Given that, we'd expect the "big announcement" will have something to do with the company's online strategy. However, we're open to suggestions; maybe the PSP will stick onto the PS3 and create a unique media-hub window, or perhaps there's a giraffe in the blu-ray disc drive. We're just not sure.

Why don't you let it all out below and let us know what you think? Alternatively you could pop over to the GDC website for more information on the upcoming event.

Rob Purchese
March 1, 2007

Source: Eurogamer

Anissian's PSP Modules Tutorial v1

Anissian has rolled out a very useful tutorial for all those who are just getting into the groove of PSP programming, PSP Modules Tutorial v1.

We've already brought you quite a lot of PSP tutorials like this one (including Yeldarb's PSP Programming Tutorial and Glynnder's Lua Coding 101), but we never get tired of posting new ones that abound because they provide a lot of people with much-needed help in programming.

So anyway, Anissian's Modules Tutorial describes the use of modules in the PSP in basic newbie-friendly terms and then gradually progresses to the more complex stuff. However, this tutorial should not be mistaken for an all-in-one PSP 101 because (in the words of Anissian) his module tutorial "aims at covering the 'what next' aspect of PSP programming" and not one that's for "starting from scratch."

To be more specific, Anissian's tutorial is released on the premise that the readers have at least a basic knowledge of C and the PSPSDK (a how-to on compiling and running Hello World apps), among many others. According to Anissian, these are the following purposes of his tutorial:

• to describe the basic steps in creating modules, including pure export modules and applications
• to explain in detail how the PSP kernel manages the modules and their import and export functions
• teach users how to patch in memory modules

So if you have time to spare and are very much interested in learning the basic stuff on PSP programming, why not get drunk on PSP knowledge and make productive use of your precious time, eh?

Download Anissian's PSP Modules Tutorial v1

Source: PSPUpdates

More Blue Lighting Mods

Everett Bradford, the person responsible for the push-activated should button mod, has informed PSPUpdates of another series of lighting mods that he had performed on his PSP. He's replaced his power, Memory Stick, and WiFi indicator LEDs with blue ones. You can check out Everett's video and more information on his website using the links below.

Everett's blue lighting mod video
Everett's Website

Via PSPUpdates