Here’s an interesting discovery pointed out by OnlyOdin (thanks for the tip!!), the most recent version of PSP custom firmware performs a check on the creator’s website before it connects to the PlayStation Store. On October 23rd, six days after the custom firmware went live, there were a total of 46,078 custom firmware connections to the PlayStation Store as determined by the number of hits on dark-alex.org. 15,359 of these connections are “unique hits” which translates to 15,359 unique PSP machines running custom firmware accessing the PlayStation Store directly from their PSP.
We can’t tell if this number is high or low since there isn’t a blanket statistic for how many PSPs with custom firmware are in the wild, but now we know there are at least 15,359 running Dark Alex’s software AND want to browse Sony’s PlayStation Store on their PSPs.