PSP Lover

Gamertell’s Jenni Lada writes, “Patapon is a strangely engaging PSP game. The rhythmic sounds and chants burrow into your brain, until you find yourself thinking in patas and chakas before bed. It enters your subconscious, compelling you to bring out the PSP and play.

And the portable nature of the PSP only makes this addiction worse. Its simple to take the game out at any time. ?Just one more five minute level,? you tell yourself, and then find a half hour later that you?re still playing.

But as wonderful as Patapon is, there are times and places where it simply doesn?t belong. Help save yourself from embarrassment and humiliation by reading and learning when it isn?t appropriate to play.”

via  http://download-psp.com/blog/?p=1771

In an effort to better understand why hackers just love messing with the PSP, Sony has commissioned a survey designed to probe the depths of the hacking mind.

Respondents were asked to rate, on a scale ranging from “Do Not Agree At All” to “Agree Completely,” their reactions to statements such as “I hack my PSP to see if I can get away with it,” and “Hacking a PSP is a positive technical challenge.”

The survey questions seem to fall into two groups: Those that suggest your typical hacker is  a childish attention-seeker (”Hacking a PSP makes me feel like a rebel”), and those that figure a hacker is simply interested in a healthy mental challenge (”I like to push the PSP in directions the developers didn’t intend.”)

I’d be curious to know what Sony plans on doing with this information once the surveys are complete. Perhaps they hope to gain some sort of insight that will help them reach a detente with the hacking community. Constantly updating the PSP’s firmware to stay one step ahead of the hacks must be a tiresome drain on resources, but I don’t see how this data will help prevent that.

Image courtesy Kotaku

via http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/04/sony-investigat.html

A teenage boy kicked a nine-year-old English girl and then swiped her Playstation Portable in Great Hollands, Bracknell Monday.

The girl was walking with a friend when a man, aged 16 to 18, ran up and kicked her in the leg, before taking the portable. That’s kinda crap.

Has the Playstation Portable become the candy of the 21st Century?