What is the future of the PlayStation Portable? That was the question IGN posed to some of the brightest and biggest talents who have worked with the game system. It's going to take technology, skill and vision to keep PSP going at this pace and attract a bigger audience. If there's a development team out there that thinks it has proven its ability to pull that off, chances are they got a buzz from IGN this week.
Not all of the developers and producers we talked to were able to take part in the feature (between difficult development schedules, tricky license issues and other reasons, a few of your favorite PSP developers may not have answers for you yet on their views of the PSP's future.) However, we do want to extend our appreciation to every single person that participated or talked with us about this feature. We would also like to thank the teams for their candor and insight -- we at IGN learned a heck of a lot about the PSP from talking with the teams powering it, and we're sure you'll learn a lot from reading through what they all had to say.
What is the future of PlayStation Portable? You're about to find out...
:: Hackers come from all sides -- some do it for the anarchy of f***ing with a major corporation and its sisyphean efforts to lock users out of their purchases, others have a strong disbelief in the reasons and implications of DRM and wish to remove it for the principle, and still others approach it as they are repairing the hardware that they respect but feel is hobbled by the lack of access a company like Sony felt it had to impose to protect its corporate interests and partners. Where do you feel you are coming from in your work with PSP?
Initially, I just wanted to be able to play with the hardware in interesting ways. It seemed so dumb to just be able to play one or 2 UMDs, when the platform had so much potential as a portable, well-connected, high-performance general computing device, with such a nice display.
Once I got stuck into the whole homebrew scene though, it became more of a duty to help others to achieve that same dream. That's actually a more efficient way of getting more use out of the platform too - what's better, to write a couple of programs yourself, or to open up the way for thousands of others to write thousands of other programs? So long as the challenge is still fun, I'm up for continuing the fight.
Besides, now that the vast majority of PSPs are homebrew-enabled, I have a little more time to pursue some other PSP projects - such as my recently-released keyboard driver.
:: Sony has, curiously enough, been the biggest proponent in the console game of open access -- Net Yaroze, Linux Kit, PS3 Linux OS, USB and Firewire inputs, standardized video and audio support ... why do you think Sony is fighting so hard against the PSP homebrew scene?
It is a little surprising that they haven't attempted a controlled homebrew environment for the PSP, a la Yaroze or similar. Obviously they have to be careful with homebrew, as there's always the risk that it can somehow lead on to piracy, and they have to be careful with that, especially with the PSP, which is still struggling with software sales, and attracting major developers to have confidence in the platform.
I suspect there are 2 factors that make them especially resistant to homebrew on the PSP - the first is that point I just made, about not wanting to dent the already shaky platform image. The second is that we already know our way around almost all the PSP internals, and so they probably feel that there's a risk that a publicly endorsed, restricted homebrew platform would soon be cracked wide open, leaving them with an officially endorsed route to piracy. I like to believe that the capable homebrew devs would be respectful of a move from Sony to open up the platform, but it's obviously impossible to have any guarantees.
Hello World, the very first unlicensed application to run on PSP. Things grew greatly from here...
:: One of the homebrew developments I've been following closely is the hack for full-frame PSP video (by Dark_AleX). Can anybody take a guess at all at why full-frame PSP video is still not officially supported? Many detractors say it's greed for UMD sales, but again, PS3 is open -- it allows HD 1080p, no problem, and the simple consumer profile video that PSP (and PS3) allows is way underpowered compared to what the pros use even if PSP allowed full-frame. And UMD is becoming less and less a part of the business, yet even licensed PSP developers can only advertise their games on PSP with soupy 320x240 video. Is the problem SCE's adherence to the Sony Memory Stick Format? Is there any logical reason why, when PSP added that "Video" root folder (and lessened the ATOM restriction), we didn't get full-frame video? Or is it just a locked feature for the ugly reasons so many assume?
I'm not aware of any technical restriction blocking full-frame, full-rate video from the MS. After all, since it works in the custom firmware, then it must be possible, right? Unless a more convincing explanation is received from Sony, I think we're stuck with the assumption that it is indeed just an effort to make UMDs look better in comparison.
:: I guess the fun of all of this open access and unlicensed experimentation ends for a lot of people (and is assumedly the chief reason why Sony is battling it so hard) is that once the door is open for homebrewers and demo sceners and such, the pirates come rushing through the same door. If, hypothetically, you could have designed a custom firmware that allowed unlicensed code but still blocked official ISO rips, would you have done it, or does that go against the principles of doing this project?
I personally would love to see a custom firmware that blocks pirated ISOs, but still somehow allows backups of your own UMDs to be played. It's a tricky problem, but at some point, if I have some free time, I'd like to do some investigation and experimentation to see what could be done to make it possible.
:: Do you hold out any hope that Sony might offer homebrew designers an olive branch of a low-profile licensing program for applications to be approved the way that Linux PS3 was? Do you want this to happen, or do you feel that there's no way Sony could make anybody happy by trying to meet homebrewers halfway?
I would like to see them try, at least. I do feel that homebrewers have done a lot to improve the appeal of the platform, and to give Sony a number of ideas about what *they* could do with it. Why not try some ways to embrace that, and improve their image amongst their customers?
Independent developer realtech has created the PSP game No Gravity using only unofficial game applications.
:: Can you guess at what's next or how much further homebrewed features can be pushed with PSP?
There's still lots of interesting stuff left that could be done with the PSP. What we really need is for people to have a little imagination in what they play with - it would be nice to see effort poured into new ideas, rather than the production of 100 clones of POPstation GUIs, or XMB skin themes.
The keyboard driver we just released has a lot of potential for development, I think at the moment that's an extremely exciting project, finally filling in a huge gap in the PSP's capabilities.
Beyond that, there are plenty of ideas for applications to make the most of the blend of portability and connectivity offered by the PSP, just keep watching the scene!
:: We're curious to know, what's your background? Have you worked on other cracking projects of other consoles or different hardware or software? Do you have a professional job in programming or is it just a hobby? Do you play a lot of games on PSP? And now that you have been able to do your part to make PSP the way you want it, are you using it more or are you just hacking for the pursuit of what can be done and what others want?
The PSP is the first console I've ever worked on. I did have a chipped PS1 many years ago, so I could play the import games I was lucky to be able to get hold of, but aside from installing the modchip, that wasn't really my own work. I've always been keen on tweaking and fiddling with things to get the most out of them, though.
I do work professionally in comms software, and have done so for over 10 years now. The PSP is an opportunity to play about in the sort of coding that I don't really get much of a chance for at work.
I do have at least 20 UMD games for the PSP, and have played most of them to completion. To be honest though, it's quite a rare event for me to see a newly released PSP game and think, "oh, I should get that one", which is a shame.
The irony of all my work on the PSP is that it has turned out to be mostly that, just unpaid work. I rarely get much time to be able to enjoy other people's homebrew apps, although I do try to stay on top of the release activity in the scene, if only to try to keep the homebrew database (
www.psp-homebrew.eu) up-to-date.
Occasionally I get offered the honour of judging a homebrew coding contest, which is usually my main opportunity to actually intensively play with the latest homebrew and to see how it is coming along. I just finished judging the PxP coding competition, and it was pleasing to see the progress that is being made. At least one of those entries was an extremely professional-looking game, and that was great to see. ..
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