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One of the topics discussed at our roundtable with Sony at E3 (besides their dislike for paying for features and their 20/20 hindsight as to what went wrong with the PS3’s development) was piracy. Piracy was half the reason SCEA’s Jack Tretton gave to why the PSP is not living up to its promise as a powerhouse portable console, with the other half being the straight-shooting admission that PSP owners didn’t want to pay for ports of PS2 games. So what can you loyal fans do when developers aren’t putting out the type of content worth playing? Homebrew, the magical world of quasi-legal third-party PSP software including web apps, radio apps, Super Nintendo/NES emulators and ripped PS1 games. I’m going to show you how to get your PSP to do all this and more.

There are dozens of guides online that show you how to get custom firmware onto your PSP in as many different ways. This is the method I found to be the easiest, combining tips from sites like PSP Slim Hacks and Code Retard. Note that this is customized for the PSP Slim, which is the only PSP you can go out to stores and buy, but most of these steps will be the same for the older PSP. I started the process with a PSP running 3.71 firmware, but it should much the same on other versions.

1) Buy a PSP MAX Power TOOL SLIM battery. Trust me. Unless you have a friend who already hacked their PSP and has a service mode battery of their own, this is the easiest solution. There are ways of modifying your current battery to enable service mode on your PSP, but the time spent doing that is much better spent doing ANYTHING else. Buy this for $25 and wait for it to come in the mail.

2) Make sure you have at least a 256MB Memory Stick and a USB to miniUSB cable to connect your PSP to your computer running a version of Windows XP. I tried this on Vista but it kept erroring out on various parts of the process.

3) Charge your current (normal) battery as well as the MAX Power to full.

4) Download this file here, as linked to from this guide here. Extract the file to your desktop (remember, Windows XP machine).

5) Connect your PSP to your computer via the USB cable and setting it in “USB mode”. Use the standard battery for this. If you have any important files on your memory card, back that up to a folder on your computer first.

6) Run the “START.exe” file from the package you extracted. Follow the instructions there. Once this is done, you’ll have what’s called a “Magic Memory Card”, which is used to replace the standard firmware with a customized one. You’ll have to pop your memory card in and out as the program tells you during the process. Follow the instructions until it tells you that you’re done, then disconnect your PSP and turn it off.

7) Take out your normal battery, but don’t put in your MAX Power battery just yet. Hold the L button (the left shoulder button) while inserting in the MAX Power battery. Make sure it’s secure and won’t fall out fall out while you’re putting the battery cover back on.

Once the PSP is on (you might have to flip the power toggle) you may see a black screen with white text, or you may see nothing at all—I saw a completely blank screen for some reason. Either way, the power light on your PSP should be green to show that the unit’s powered on. To install the firmware, press the X button. You should see the Memory Stick light on the left of your PSP flash with activity. When this is done, the PSP will shut itself off. Congrats! Now you have version 3.71 m33. But you’re not done.

9) To upgrade this to version 4.01 (the latest hacked release as of this writing), download these files. First, the official 4.01 firmware. Then, the hacked 4.01 m33 and also 4.01 m33-2. That not a typo, by the way: Those file names are actually backwards and m33 is actually m33-2. Keep this in mind.

10) Extract all 3 files into their own directories. The 401-m332 folder (which should actually be the m33 update and not the m33-2 update) should have a folder called UPDATE under it. The Now, place the 401.PBP file (the official 4.01 firmware file) into the 401-m33 UPDATE. All this is going on on your PC’s hard drive, not the PSP.

11) Then connect your PSP to your PC again (put the normal battery back), enable USB mode and copy the entire UPDATE folder from your PC onto /PSP/GAME/ onto your PSP’s memory card.

12) On your PSP, exit USB mode, go to the Game and then Memory Stick, and run the PSP Update. Follow the instructions on screen, and you should have a PSP running 4.01 m33.

13) Now, connect your PSP to your computer using USB mode, delete the UPDATE folder under /PSP/GAME from your PSP, and copy over the UPDATE folder that belongs to the 401m33-2 file from your PC onto the PSP. Then go to the Game section and run this update on your PSP. You don’t need the official 4.01 firmware in your UPDATE folder for this. Woohoo, you’re finished.

Are you ready to get some homebrew going? Hit up PSP Hacks for a big list of applications you can run, including web apps, radio apps, Sudoku and even emulators. For obvious reasons, we’re not going to link you to actual ROMs to run on an SNES emulator, but you can find those in the usual places you get ROMs. There are several SNES emulators to choose from, but this SNES emulator runs particularly well on the PSP, lending itself to old school gaming on the go.

Although a side effect of homebrew is that you can run pirated PSP games on your PSP, that’s being pretty naughty and isn’t something we encourage. The fact that a lot of people are doing this is contributing to (according to Sony) the lack of good games for the platform, which hurts everybody. Try not do to this.

What you can do is rip your old PS1 games and play THOSE on your PSP without waiting for an official release and having to pay Sony again for something you already own. Another idea when you’re going on vacation is to get a 16GB Memory Stick and load all the PSP games you own onto it so you don’t have to carry around so many UMDs. In order to rip PS1 games, you’ll need a program like ISOBuster (there are others as well) that can take your disc and create an “image” of it on your hard drive, which is just a file representing the contents of the CD. You then plug those files into a program called PSX eBoot Creator to make it suitable for your PSP. The file and instructions on how to use it can be found here. You don’t need a separate emulator once you have the eBoot file, but you do need plenty of space on your Memory Stick (1GB is probably only enough to hold a couple small games or one large one).

Thanks: We wanted to thank all the hard work that the PSP community—which includes PSP Slim Hacks and Code Retard which we got much help installing this from.

Did you like this How To tutorial? The point was to give you the easiest path from start to finish, even if it required you to spend money on purchasing something. Your time is valuable, which means you don’t want to spend hours solving something yourself when it can easily be bypassed with a few dollars. What do you want to see a How To on? Drop us a note at tips@gizmodo.com with the subject “How To Suggestion”.

Original post by Jason Chen

Couple of news tidbits from the shadowy Wii homebrew scene today. First is what is supposedly the first custom Wii firmware that its author, Waninkoko, claims will allow the Wii to read burned DVDs without any hardware modification. And from the “just for the hell of it” department is a separate announcement of a PSP emulator running successfully on the Wii—albeit at a blazingly unplayable four to eight frames per second. The PSP emulator smells a bit more of fish than the DVD-R enabling firmware, but neither have been tested officially. [Waninkoko, DCEmu via Slashdot]

Original post by John Mahoney

From the official PlayStation blog comes word this evening that the PlayStation Portable is set to receive a firmware update to version 4.05 very soon. E3, which started unofficially today and begins in earnest on Monday, is probably a safe bet for a more official Sony announcement. The folks at the PlayStation blog hinted the update is music-focused, and would feature new visualizers for music playback, among other unannounced features. [PlayStation Blog]

Original post by Jack Loftus

The PSP controls are not horrible—though that analog nub leaves something to be desired—but the DualShock is a far more comfortable controller. Now the fine citizens at AcidMods have hacked the PSP hardware to work with the DualShock. Requiring no changes to the firmware, all functions but the brightness and volume are mapped to the controller. And it seems to work perfectly:

Maybe the best part is that the right analog stick has been mapped with the D-Pad buttons. So while it’s still not quite perfect for an FPS, it feels better than the alternative. Damn I wish the PSP had two analog sticks. [acidmods]

Original post by Mark Wilson

Inside a mostly speculative piece about iPhone nanos and GPS on the next iPhone, Popular Mechanics does have one pretty solid nuggest: The president of an unnamed GPS navigator maker (figure out who for bonus points) is apparently “scared shitless” by the prospect of an iPhone with GPS, because it’d be good enough for most users to never even glance at a separate GPS unit—with a decent-sized touchscreen and Google Maps interface, just add a carmount and you’re good to go on foot or the road. In a way, this was inevitable.

Pretty much everything that fits a GPS module inside is rocking GPS, and more and more gadgets are getting GPS add ons (the PSP’s looks particularly killer). While most of them don’t touch high-end units in features or functionality, for your average trekker, they offer enough. So while more people than ever are using GPS, and that’ll keep growing by leaps and bounds, the likes of Garmin and TomTom won’t necessarily be reaping the windfall hawking the same old wares.

So yeah, they should worry about the iPhone. And the PSP. And everything else with a screen. When a technology truly becomes one of the masses, it’s hard to hold on to it. [Popular Mechanics]

Original post by matt buchanan

If sales figures aren’t enough reason to show that the PSP is really making some progress in Japan against the DS, how about the fact that it was used in an upskirt crime? According to the Japanese police, or JaPoPos, a 59-year-old college administrator was looking up a skirt belonging to a 19-year-old girl on a train line. He was arrested using anti-stalker laws, and if he’s convicted, it’ll probably lead to even better sales of the PSP and the PSP camera peripheral in Japan. [NikkanSports via Livedoor via Kotaku]

Original post by Jason Chen

According to PC World, the PS3’s firmware version 2.20 will allow it to send standard def copies of Blu-ray movies to PSPs. We covered news of this firmware before, happy the PS3 is getting more advanced Blu-ray support. And we covered these PS3 to PSP transfers in January. But this is the first time we’ve heard of these features being mentioned within a specific firmware. Great in principle, but I’m not sure I want to a) wait through the transfer and encode from Blu to PS3 to PSP and b) have to start carrying my PSP around. Might be better off just ripping those movies totally DRM free so you can put them on any device. [PC World via PSPUpdates]

Original post by Brian Lam

When asked whether or not he viewed the upcoming PSP phone as a threat to the N-Gage, Nokia games head honcho Jaakko Kaidesoja responded thusly:

“I’m not scared about anybody. The real question is how do they [Sony Ericsson] do it? Can they create a link between the PSP games and a phone? Can they do the multiplayer and online stuff? We’ve been doing this for two years and it hasn’t been easy.”

Is that the real question—or is it whether or not Nokia can do anything right and finally get a gaming platform off the ground? [Pocket Gamer]

Original post by Sean Fallon

There’s no exact date yet, but Kotaku’s reporting that a red PSP will be hitting this summer bundled with a copy of God of War: Chains of Olympus as well as Superbad and a gift certificate for a downloadable PlayStation Store game. It’s similar to the Star Wars PSP from last summer in that it’s a branded PSP, but instead of a bald disabled man with a deep voice, you’re getting a bald Spartan with a deep voice. [Kotaku]

Original post by Jason Chen

Dark-AleX has just released a hack for the PSP that boots from the Memory Stick, and will allow you to select any firmware version you so choose. The app, dubbed Time Machine, will also boot-up PSPs with destroyed firmware, a second life for you not-so-great hackers out there. It functions via Pandora, and looks a bit tricky to get to grips with at the moment.

Nevertheless, the nifty bit of software will work on both the original PSP and the skinny, prettier version too. We just tried to grab the app from the link over at DCEmu, but it appears the servers are down from all those individuals trying to resurrect their PSPs like a phoenix from the flames. It’s a waiting game for now, but as ever, proceed with caution. [DCEmu]

Original post by Haroon Malik