Interview with a PSP Developer - Doug Beck

April 6th, 2006, 00:54 Posted By: wraggster

ComputerZen posted an interview with Doug Beck, heres a little from that interview:

Scott: What's the OS for the PSP?

Doug: It's running Sony's ever-updating OS. In just over a year Sony has updated the OS via firmware updates (required to play the latest games) approximately 5 times.

Scott: What kind of stuff are they changing? The public thinks they are chasing security stuff, but what's it mean for the dev? Do functions change?

Doug: The PSP itself is a remarkable piece of equipment. Not only does it have an amazing screen, and optical DVD drive, Playstation 2-like graphics hardware, and 802.11 wireless networking, it's sexy to boot! They are addressing security issues and updating the main component apps (photo, video, music, games) of the device in the patches, but they are also making major additions to the platform. They've added a web browser, RSS feeds, a 'sling-box' like client that allows you to stream live or recorded TV from home. They've also added support for more video formats and general user interface improvements. But the unannounced improvements that are coming to the PSP platform are the most impressive. By next year at this time, everyone's PSPs will be transforming to much more than they are now through firmware updates.
As the firmware updates there are a few growing pains for developers but it's generally minor changes to support the latest firmware. When they jumped to the 2.0 firmware they made some particularly large changes to certain systems that required studios like ours to invest a fair amount of time getting everything working.

Full interview here --> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Interv...rDougBeck.aspx

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