Edge Online: Third Parties Abandoning PSP

Shadow wrote:

Cyburn2 wrote:

Shadow wrote:Piracy is to blame, it's hit the PSP like no other console since the days of casette tapes, it's just so bloody easy, no special hardware or knowledge required, just stick the files on a memory stick and run them - Voila custom OS and free games!

It's such a shame, the console had so much potential, I imported at Jap launch and for me it's just never delivered.

The DS is way easier to play pirated games with the R4, CYCLOS evolution etc.... and it hasnt declined that much.

No it isn't, it requires going out/online and finding the necessary hardware and then paying money for it, all the PSP needs is a memory card and a USB cable, which every PSP owner will already have.

I can't believe you even made that suggestion.

Actually, I agree with him. All a DS requires is a flash cart, micro SD card and a very basic knowledge of file structures. It's offensively simple.

Modifying a PSP can require you messing around with downgrading firmware using either game or hardware exploits, putting the PSP into recovery mode, finding all the relevant official and custom firmware needed from various sources online, as well as having the knowledge of what to do with it all. Modifying a Slim PSP gets even trickier, having you fiddling around with modded battery packs, or having access to an already-modded Phat PSP.

The key difference being, and I'm using these terms *very* loosely, what sort of inclination your 'average' PSP and DS user has to do these things. That is to say, I'm willing to bet that the PSP userbase is tech-savvy enough to consider the process relatively simple, whereas my Brain Training-playing mum wouldn't know what an R4 was if she swallowed it.

I still think that having to pay £30(?) for an R4 is a far, far, far bigger barrier that putting custom firmware on a PSP, perhaps less-so with the slim PSP, I didn't realise it was more tricky.

All it really needs is a Google search and then follow the instructions, regardless of how complicated they are, when you're being told what to do it can't be that tough.

Shadow wrote:All it really needs is a Google search and then follow the instructions, regardless of how complicated they are, when you're being told what to do it can't be that tough.

Yeah, agreed. But again, aside from the whole million-sellers thing, Nintendo's targeting of non-gamers is probably one of the smartest moves they ever made in their efforts to combat piracy. The Fern-and-Philip Wii Fit audience isn't one that's going to keep up to date with the latest methods in software piracy.