PlayStation Portable homebrew

Additional features added including the ability to emulate and play the ROMs of other consoles, play homebrew games, share music, print photos, watch videos from streaming sites such as YouTube, and run additional video formats originally unsupported by the device.

The reverse engineering process to understand the PSP hardware started shortly after the advent of homebrew unsigned code execution.

This effort led to development of Toolchain[3] and SDK[4] by enthusiasts and paved the way to utilise vector floating point co-processor, GPU and audio capabilities of the device without asking Sony for permission.

Several demoscene non-interactive creations were released targeting PSP such as Suicide Barbie,[5][6][7] purely to demonstrate optimisation skills of the developers and the power of the handheld.

[1] In August 2005 Sony released version 2.0 of the firmware which included the web browser, file compatibility updates and other features.

[11] Dark AleX (aka Dark_AleX, Dax) was a Spanish programmer who wrote homebrew applications for the PlayStation Portable.

[9] In July 2007 Dark_AleX officially stopped his work on the PSP, citing perceived problems with Sony as one of the reasons for his departure.

[15] Custom Firmware allows the running of unsigned code such as homebrew applications and UMD backups, emulators for other consoles, as well as PlayStation games when the disc images are converted into PSP format.

[16] Half Byte Loader (also known as HBL) is an open source software project that aims at loading homebrew for PlayStation Portable handheld console through user-mode exploits.

Hackers have stated that the motivation for unlocking the PSP has nothing to do with piracy, but allowing individuals full access to the products they've purchased and the freedom to do what they want with the item as well as the interest in exploring something unknown.

"[13] Sony has told the media that any issues resulting from running modified code on the device would void the warranty.

[25] According to Phillip Torrone from Make magazine, this hampering could be due to the attempts to curb piracy and may cause more harm than good.