Dark-Alex has released a new version of the 5.00M33 custom PSP firmware which addresses a few of the issues that people have been having -

* A bug was introduced in 5.00 M33-2 that made some games and homebrew to not work.
* PSN version check is now automatically bypassed without the need of touching any settings.

This comes on top of the 5.00M33-2 custom PSP firmware release that occurred yesterday that I didn’t report on. That release fixed the following issues -

* Popcorn bug fixes
* Fixed bug that caused some games with certain icons not to work, and caused document.dat not to work.
* Fixed critical bug that caused continous corruption of psx games in RAM.
* Core bugfix: Fixed sctrlKernelSetInit* functions not working.
* M33 network update doesn’t work in 5.00 M33, fixed.
* Added the possibility of loading version information from the file flash0:/vsh/etc/version.txt

If you are running 5.00M33, I recommend you update to the latest version to avoid any problems.

Exophase

Sony are being very upbeat about sales of the PSP in the current financial year (09). According to a report on Reuters, Sony are expecting to sell 16 million units, rather than the 15 million they initially forecasted.

This is despite the new PSP-3000 (PSP Brite) not selling quite as well as the PSP-2000 did on it initial launch. However, this doesn’t really surprise me – the new version isn’t a revolutionary step forward, and unlike the step change from the PSP-1000 to the PSP-2000, there is little incentive for current owners to upgrade, especially since there have been problems reported with the new PSP-3000 screen and scan lines.

We will have to see if the Christmas festive season sees those sales figures rise – no one mention the words credit crunch. I believe Sony are going to be releasing some new PSP-3000 colours over the next month or two, which should boost sales a little more, at least for those who are fashion concious and like to have a PSP that matches their outfit.

It looks like the flaw that has been reported on the new PSP-3000 (PSP Brite) where scan lines are visible on the screen is a ‘feature’ and not a flaw after all.

“PSP-3000 has a new LCD device with vastly improved picture quality, achieving a more natural and vivid picture than older models. By improving LCD response time to reduce ghosting, the horizontal-line phenomenon becomes more visible.”

If this is true, and it is a hardware feature as opposed to a software problem, there is no way its going to be resolved, other than by a recall, and Sony won’t be interested in that one, especially in the run up to Christmas.

So, if you do get yourself a new PSP-3000, be aware that its likely to suffer the scan lines problem and its not going to be resolved by any software fixes.