Gameshastra has teamed up with Future Publishing to give away free copies of its PSP Mini title, D-Cube Planet. The action-puzzler, usually worth £2.49, will be available to consumers through the second episode of Future’s innovative on-console games show FirstPlay, which goes live on PSN tomorrow.
“We’re delighted to partner with FirstPlay to offer its users a special free gift,” said Gameshastra CEO Prakash Ahjua. “D-Cube Planet has been a tremendous hit with consumers since its launch late last year, and we’re hopeful that many more people will fall for its charms with this fantastic promotion.”
FirstPlay editor-in-chief Tim Clark added: “Each week, our focus is to show gamers the most exciting things on PlayStation systems, and thanks to Gameshastra, we can throw open the world of PSP Minis to gamers who haven’t experience a game like D-Cube Planet themselves.


“The response to our launch episode has been great, and we’re actively listening to gamers, through direct feedback from their PS3 and our social media channels. FirstPlay will continue to evolve, and early adopters can help us shape the future of Europe’s only on-console interactive show.”

http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/300...with-Firstplay ...

Apple has said that it will delay the launch of the iPad due to the demand for the gadget in the US.

The company said it had taken a large number of pre-orders for the iPad 3G, due for release at the end of the month, and will delay the release outside of the US for one month in order to meet North American demand.

"Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad," said Apple in a statement. "We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April."

"Faced with this surprisingly strong US demand, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May."

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last week the company "can't make enough" iPads to meet demand. Today, the firm has said it will reveal international prices for the device on May 10.

"We will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on Monday, May 10. We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be disappointed by this news, but we hope they will be pleased to learn the reason—the iPad is a runaway success in the US thus far," added Apple.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...al-ipad-launch ...

News via http://x360.gx-mod.com/modules/news/...p?storyid=2648

The Team XeLove offers a new version of their Game Boy Advance emulator based on the famous VBA (VisualBoyAdvance).

Features:

- GBA Emulation complete (full speed)
- Screenshot
- Backup Management
- Ingame menu via sticks G + D
- Support for Spanish and Italian

New / fixed:

- Added support for Cheat Codes
- New Interface
- Game Boy and Game Boy Color Support
- Fixed bugs graphics / audio with Metroid
- Fixed all the memory leaks
- Staff Gameplay
- Support boxart
- Various improvements / corrections.

http://lovemhz.blogspot.com/ ...

News via http://www.psp-ita.com/?module=news&...9&view_reply=1

Finally back on the PlayStation Store through custom firmware plugin PSN****er developed by coder Vosman, which henceforth will be accessible through our account to the PlayStation Network to visit the store, download content and, last but not least, play multiplayer titles that require it. The prx is based on PSNnabler, which recently released Redha SourceAnd is compatible with CF 5.xx. To use it you must install it like any other plugin, if we were to encounter an error when logging on CF 5:50 GEN-D3/5.03 may need to set the recovery menu option "Fake region" to "Debug Type I "and disable the M33 network update. ...

News via http://www.psp-ita.com/?module=news&...9&view_reply=1

Finally back on the PlayStation Store through custom firmware plugin PSN****er developed by coder Vosman, which henceforth will be accessible through our account to the PlayStation Network to visit the store, download content and, last but not least, play multiplayer titles that require it. The prx is based on PSNnabler, which recently released Redha SourceAnd is compatible with CF 5.xx. To use it you must install it like any other plugin, if we were to encounter an error when logging on CF 5:50 GEN-D3/5.03 may need to set the recovery menu option "Fake region" to "Debug Type I "and disable the M33 network update. ...

News via http://www.psp-ita.com/?module=news&...6&view_reply=1

Another update Jpcsp, PSP emulator for PC developed in Java programming language that comes to revision 1476. For proper use of Jpcsp, which allows you to run some homebrew like those included in the archive, you need to install Java on your PC.
Following the full changelog and download link.

Changelog:

Quote:

Rev1476: Improvements for pspge - sceGeListEnqueueHead Implemented - Partially Implemented sceGeGetCmd and sceGeGetMtx (need checking) - Added draft for sceGeEdramSetAddrTranslation - Added newly Discovered in pspge behavior (usage of "sync" instruction Allegrex, Also needs checking)
Rev1475: Improved sceRtcGetCurrentClock. Corrected sceDisplayIsForeground. Added implementations for draft and sceDisplaySetHoldMode sceDisplaySetResumeMode
Rev1474: Implemented sceRtcGetCurrentClock and sceDisplayIsForeground. Removed two AES handling to new findings. Fixed sceAtracDecodeData. Small fixes for sceMpeg and sceSasCore. ...

News via http://www.psp-ita.com/?module=news&...6&view_reply=1

Another update Jpcsp, PSP emulator for PC developed in Java programming language that comes to revision 1476. For proper use of Jpcsp, which allows you to run some homebrew like those included in the archive, you need to install Java on your PC.
Following the full changelog and download link.

Changelog:

Quote:

Rev1476: Improvements for pspge - sceGeListEnqueueHead Implemented - Partially Implemented sceGeGetCmd and sceGeGetMtx (need checking) - Added draft for sceGeEdramSetAddrTranslation - Added newly Discovered in pspge behavior (usage of "sync" instruction Allegrex, Also needs checking)
Rev1475: Improved sceRtcGetCurrentClock. Corrected sceDisplayIsForeground. Added implementations for draft and sceDisplaySetHoldMode sceDisplaySetResumeMode
Rev1474: Implemented sceRtcGetCurrentClock and sceDisplayIsForeground. Removed two AES handling to new findings. Fixed sceAtracDecodeData. Small fixes for sceMpeg and sceSasCore. ...

News via http://www.open-pandora.org/index.ph...emid=2&lang=en

Well, it looks like I have to revise my last blogpost, as Michael did know a lot more that WAS already happening than I did. And a lot of questions arosed which I also want to reply.


So, here is a nice addition to my last blog entry:

1. As said, doing the mod in Turkey was just an OPTION to make things faster, it was NOT set yet (never said that). As it looks, the decision has already been made and the boards are already on their way to UK! (Yay!)

2. Another new thing I didn't know yet is that the board production for the rest of the 4000 has already been resumed. Makes sense, as the WiFi issue has been resolved.

3. The cases are going to be shipped on April 17th to UK if they WON'T be painted or April 20th IF they will be painted. After all, the paint is applied AFTER the production, so we can say either DO IT or DON'T do it - depending on how far things are setup in UK and how well everything does fit in the painted case.

I hope that makes things a lot clearer - there were a lot of things I didn't know yet. I did send an email to the team asking for the latest information yesterday, but it seems due to the timzeones it didn't quite make it in time, so I could only post what I knew we were evaluating.

Sorry for all the inconvenience... now, let's get back to anticipate the Pandora! ...

News via http://www.open-pandora.org/index.ph...emid=2&lang=en

Here we go with the latest updates for the hungry masses!
First, my apologies for not updating the site a lot. That WiFi issue really did wear me out, I wasn't able to do much during that time. We all were a bit demotivated, but now that WiFi's working, we've recovered and are working fullspeed ahead!
Sorry for that, but after all, we're only human beings, too... and after years of constant work on the Pandora and our normal jobs... well, things can get a bit hard.

1. The hardware

Michael has finished working on WiFi and did manage to get it working quite well. Stable websurfing at about 500 KB/s. He tried webbrowsing, streaming music, etc.
This put our minds on ease, we really were quite scared when we found out about WiFi.
We now got FULLY WORKING HARDWARE, as we got drivers for EVERY component!

As can be seen on this picture, there's a lot of boxes shipping to UK. Some might go to Turkey, as Fatih got hold of a company who usually does laptop repairs, and they might help to fix the WiFi on the already produced 700 boards to speed things up a bit.

Boxes full of B...

This whole WiFi issue did throw as back a few weeks - but I hope you all do agree it's better we took the two weeks finding out what the problem was. Otherwise, you would've been gotten Pandoras with broken WiFi... not a good idea, if you ask me.
This seemed to happen for a big, well-known company whose latest product has serious WiFi issues (and WiFi working much worse than ours...)
We rather ship you something working - even if it did delay things by two or three more weeks!

2. The cases

While Michael was working on WiFi, the Chinese were working on increasing the case quality.
And we really do think it was worth the extra time - especially the final one that has some paint added looks spot-on!
Way better than anything we've seen before!

Was it worth it? That's up to decide for yourself. We sure do think so.

Unfortunately, adding paint did lead to one thing that has to be done: As it makes the case a bit thicker, Michael needs to approve that case and therefore is waiting for a sample.
To speed production up, Fatih will visit the company in China if necessary to make sure they won't mess around more but start shipping!
They still have a few days to ship, as applying the WiFi fix to the boards will take a while.

One thing that might interest you: You might have seen that they also painted a pink version of the Pandora... Michael will most probably put a Rev 4 board in and sell it on eBay soon!
Yep, that Prototype will probably be out shortly before we assemble and ship!

So if you want to own this case, keep your eyes on our blog!

Oh, some might think Painting is cheating... well, not really.
A lot of companies actually do it that way - and it doesn't wear off. Remember the old Nintendo DS? Not the DS Lite, but the old silvergrey one? I got one. Never had a carry case, it's really scratched (even the LCD is scratched).
But only on one corner it can be seen it's painted - and only because the base plastic color was white.
So black with black won't wear off - don't worry. It will simply LOOK better.

3. The software

I'm currently doing a lot of neat scripts while DJWillis prepare the image for the NAND.
Today I did create an LCD Gamma Manager - a small tool where you can create, load and save various LCD Gamma settings. I also created one that looks like an old CRT TV. Really cool - emulation on a handheld has never looked better!
To check out what's happening on the OS, simply go to http://git.openpandora.org

As Midori was a bit unstable and FireFox eating up RAM, we changed browsers once again. Arora is now included in the OS. Fast, without any rendering issues and it didn't crash yet for me.
The OS is getting more and more complete.

That's it for now - as soon as I know any more information (shipping dates for the cases, dates when we all meet in England, etc.), I'll inform you!
And sorry to my German readers: I'll translate the post tomorrow, it's 5:50 am now, I want to go to bed... ...