QuickJump QuickPeek #66: Of the biggest PSP hack/hoax evah, challenges, and more
It was a tough week, alright, with the QJ team having to contend with a lot of fakers, a last-minute faking ourselves, and me personally now having to protect myself against some wicked magic of the black kind for leading people to believe that now is the best time to buy a Phantasy Star Portable – cos you know, news broke out that the PSP Brite has finally been hacked — on April Fool’s day. Yeah-huh, being fun sure is a lot of hard work. Thank goodness we’ve got juicy, exciting news from our friends in the gaming industry to balance it all out. And we’ve got them bundled up all nice and warm for you in ish #66 .
It was a tough week, alright, with the QJ team having to contend with a lot of fakers, a last-minute faking ourselves, and me personally now having to protect myself against some wicked magic of the black kind for leading people to believe that now is the best time to buy a Phantasy Star Portable – cos you know, news broke out that the PSP Brite has finally been hacked — on April Fool’s day.
Yeah-huh, being fun sure is a lot of hard work. Thank goodness we’ve got juicy, exciting news from our friends in the gaming industry to balance it all out. And we’ve got them bundled up all nice and warm for you in QuickJump QuickPeek #66 to avoid the weekend rush.
John Koller‘s had a pretty busy week himself, too, spreading the good word about the PSP, from forecasting sales to scheduling and revealing games line-ups for this year. And another exciting bit is the discovered registered “PS Cloud” name, which we assume to be a new PlayStation network grid. It could be anything, actually, and that’s what makes it even more intriguing, yes?
On the gaming front, the US debut trailer for Dissidia: FInal Fantasy was released this week past, and it came out beautifully, even without no voiceovers. But Dissidia better watch out, cos Namco Bandai‘s sending over some competiion. That’s right, Tales of VS is coming to the PSP. In the meantime, Ghostbusters fans were given a heaping of disappointment as Atari busted the ESRB games listing announcing The Video Game to also be coming to the PSP.
Link: PSP Weekend Warrior
Lots of homebrew apps and games were released this past week, a sure sign that development is up and healthy for the PSP. Of all the brews though, I’d say my favorite would have to be the Etch-A-Sketch homebrew version. Just cos, you know.
But a quick surprise came out just before the week ended, shattering they calm of the scene. What’s this? Fanjita returns? And armed with a fully workable PSP Brite hack??? That’s freakin’ great!
But entirely not true. Tee-hee. Convict me guilty for raising your hopes up and dashing it right back down to the ground. It was all in the spirit of April Fool’s. However, as we promised in our “readme” file, we’ll be sure to let you know when the real thing does land. Still, thanks for being a good sport!
Link: PSP Homebrew Weekend Warrior
Firmware 2.70 was released oh-so-quietly by Sony, after telling us earlier that week that it was gonna be arriving soon. The features were really something to look out for, particularly the new Text Chat Feature. However, a short while after it came out, complaints started pouring in that updating to 2.70 messes up the PS2-PS3 games adapters – an issue that sorely hurt a lot of gamers. No response yet from Sony about this, though.
The other newsmaker: the much-hyped about Sony announcement — which turned out to be not so big anyway. No, it was not a PS3 price cut, nor was it a PSP 2 unveiled. It was, disappointingly, a PS2 price cut. Nothing surprising about that, really, and it’s quite expected actually.
Le sigh. Announcements of announcements. They kinda suck, don’t they? But hey, Sony now stands in good graces with Greenpeace for being the greenest consoles manufacturer, so hooray, I guess. And more gaming news after the link.
Link: PS3 Weekend Warrior
Keeping in line with this week’s “tough time” theme is the Xbox 360 blog, updated and filled with challenges. Bethesda is still faced with the challenge of getting The Pitt finally right, as it launched for the third time a quick fix for the persistent freeze bug caught in-game. And then there’s Peter Molyneux talking in detail the challenges they face with the new Fable game, and MS’ own internal office challenge of having to settle with Jamie Durrant, the employee who was mistreated in the office.
It’s not easy being green, so they say.
Link: Xbox 360 Weekend Warrior
Waninkoko went for the win this week with the launch of his USB Loader v1.0 for the Wii, which now allows you to load backups from USB storage. That definitely made a big splash in the WiiBrew community.
But that’s not to say that was all going for the Wii and DS crowd. Shattered Dreams has been announced to arrive on the Wii console, while Puyo Pop 7 will make its way to both WiiDS. Despite the wholesome, healthy, happy image of the Wii, though, an unfortunate death occurred to a healthy 25-year old, as he was playing Wii Fit.
Link: WiiDS Weekend Warrior
Skype took over the iPhone this week, and we’re inching ever closer to the launch of the iPhone’s OS 3.0. Excited much? We know you are. Especially since the 3.0 beta 2 has been announced to have been successfully jailbroken! Apple won’t be too happy about that, but yeah. These jailbreakers are just really good.
And what’s this? Sony wanting to get a bite out of the hot-selling Apple pie? Word has it in the streets that Sony is actually considering a movie tie-in games with iPhone. What would PSP say?
Link: iPhone Weekend Warrior
General Gaming: It was another week of learning, with studies coming out with their findings left and right. From game addiction, to certified game addicts who will choose video games over sex, to driving games as the real agitators, and not FPS, as urban legends would have us gamers believe. Are you or are you not? That is the question that your social friends would like to know, once you start ditching them cos you have a raid to go to on a Friday night. Then again, the fact that you still have social friends asking you out on a weekend is probably still a good sign that you’ve still got real friends, right?
Link: Are you a gaming addict? Here are ten signs to see if you are
Oh-kay. Here’s a sure sign that you are most probably a gaming addict. You’ll probably say, “Nah, those in that portion of statistics must be cuhrazee!” Think again, you just might not be aware, but you might be one of that statistics.
Link: Study says a third of men prefer video games to sex This one’s something new. For a change, somebody’s calling out the good-as-Bible-truth-fact on video games being linked to violence. Researchers from the Huddersfield University has brought into question this connection of video games being a stimulant for violent behavior.
I am actually aggressive and angry.
It would have been easy to conclude that they’d find the same result as all the other previous studies, but this is not the case. In fact, they found quite the opposite of what we would have normally expected. According to their findings, it’s actually driving games that make gamers more aggressive and agitated, and in fact, it’s the FPS games that least affect this kind of behavior. Hmm.. hmm… interesting, innit?
Link: Study: Violent games least likely to cause gamer aggression
Speaking of aggression, though, an unfortunate crime crime occurred, with a man killing his partner of 30 years after she allegedly has had too much GTA on the PlayStation. The twist in this story is that it was the victim who was hooked to the game, and not the attacker. Her addiction for the game got to the point that she threw her partner out so she can play all night long, which led him to attack her with two knives.
Link: Man kills partner after she had too much GTA on PlayStation
And don’t you forget our QuickGuide and How-To offerings for this week. We had a line-up of QJ’s picks of the Most Useful PSP Homebrew Applications, and then showed you How To install CXMB. We hope you found them both useful and helpful, and we promise there’ll be more to come in the following weeks:
Link: QuickJump QuickGuide #8: QJ’s Most Useful PSP Homebrew Applications
Link: QJ. Net’s How-To #8: CXMB Installation
And that’s all we have for you in this issue of the QuickJump QuickPeek. Next week, there’ll be more in store for you. Oh, and do watch out for the next wave of QuickGuides and How-To’s. Up next: iPhone and its brewing homebrew scene. We hope you’ll support that just as much as you supported the PSP coverage. Not to worry, though, that does not mean that’ll be the last of the PSP QG’s and HT’s. We’ll just make one quick round on other brews, and then we’ll come back to the PSP for more, okay?
So just keep jumpin’ and we’ll see you again next week!
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