PlayStation Portable

PlayStation Portable
Developer: Sony Computer Entertainment Released in JP: December 12, 2004 Released in US: March 24, 2005 Released in EU: September 1, 2005 This game has debugging material. This game has a prototype article

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The PlayStation Portable (or PSP, for short) is one of two handheld consoles released by Sony, and the only one that wasn't a flop. It was designed to compete with the Nintendo DS, and many had predicted at the time that it would end Nintendo's dominance of the handheld market like the PlayStation had done a decade earlier.

A system ahead of its time in many ways, it boasted incredible power for a handheld system, a vast array of multimedia features, a digital storefront for buying games, the ability to play PS1 games, and a sad excuse for an analog stick.

Unfortunately, an iffy battery life, shoddy optical "UMD" format for games (which also includes pushing it as a film and music distribution format), widespread hacking and piracy (though the DS wasn't much better on that front) and unbeatable competition meant that it was never really able to dominate like Sony had hoped, and after the flop of the system's followup, the PlayStation Vita, Sony abandoned the handheld market.

That said, the console did sell very well and boasted one of the most enthusiastic homebrew communities for any system. And while it may not have defeated Nintendo's handheld empire, it got far closer than just about any other handheld system.

Quite a few hardware revisions were released for it - usually incremental ones that improved upon features like build quality and battery life, but also a few "experimental" ones - The most interesting were the PSP Street, which gutted all wireless and internet functionality, and the PSP Go, which went the exact opposite route and removed the UMD drive entirely to push players to downloading digital games.

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Prototype Info

Hidden Firmware Info

Extended information about the installed PSP firmware can be found on the main System Information screen. To access this menu, from the PSP main menu:

1. Go to Settings, System Settings, System Information.
2. Hold L + R + Left + Square for at least three seconds.
3. Release those buttons, then immediately hold Start.

The firmware's build date can be found in the second-to-last line of information (in the case above, the build date is October 10, 2008). The extra information will disappear once Start is released, unless Left is pressed before releasing.