After a disappointingly anti-climactic reveal at E3, Sony's PSPgo finally arrives on retail shelves this week - or at least, on the shelves of the majority of retailers who are supporting the device, while a fringe of refuseniks continue to decline to sell a console they'll never be able to sell games for.

This unseemly spat with a small group of retailers is far from the biggest pothole on the PSPgo's rough road to launch. The console, its functionality and its price point have been confusing, annoying and disappointing a broad cross-section of consumers, market commentators and industry professionals since the system first took a bow in Los Angeles.

The most obvious and oft-repeated criticism of the platform is the most simple - it offers no upgrade path for existing PSP owners. If you've bought a PSP previously, and own some UMDs for the machine, forget about the PSPgo. Lacking a UMD drive, it won't be able to play your discs - and after hinting at a service which would swap UMD copies for digital downloads, Sony has now announced that it'll do nothing of the sort. An offer of a few free games from a limited list for previous PSP owners is fairly weak compensation (and so far available only in Europe).

Of course, having to re-purchase content in a new format isn't an entirely new experience for consumers - although we've had it easy in recent years, since our CDs could be ripped to create MP3s, and our DVDs play perfectly happily on our Blu-Ray players. One could compare the move from UMD to digital download as being similar to moving from a tape Walkman to a CD Walkman - same content, slightly improved user experience, but you had to buy all your albums again.

That's not a defence which is likely to calm any of the consumers annoyed at Sony's back-pedalling on the whole UMD conversion issue, though. The affair stings all the more because it carries such a heavy burden of "I told you so" for many consumers and professionals alike. UMD has been utterly despised since the outset, marked out as a doomed format since the day it first crawled, ill-conceived and unloved, onto store shelves.

The reality has always been that UMD sucks battery life, contributes to massive load delays and makes the console ridiculously noisy for a handheld. Sony argued its corner for years, and even now protests that it will continue to support UMD-toting PSP owners with the PSP-3000 hardware. For now, that's fair - but it's still obvious that PSPgo is a major step down the road to obsolescence for the format, and it doesn't change the fact that if you want Sony's new console, you'd better be prepared to pay for your games and movies again.

This isn't necessarily an unsurmountable problem for the PSPgo. After all, if the hardware is attractive enough, consumers will, ultimately, suck down their pride, open their wallets and buy into the new system. Good hardware design and compelling features can overcome almost any level of consumer antipathy, in the long run.

It remains to be seen whether the market judges the PSPgo to be worthy on those grounds. The machine is certainly attractive enough, handily ticking the boxes marked slim, light and sleek. Personally, I remain totally disappointed by Sony's lack of foresight regarding additional functions for the system - including things like a camera, microphone or GPS module as part of the hardware would have seriously set this apart from its predecessor. Like much else with the device, this feels like a missed opportunity.

Again, I can see the counter-argument to that point - that including those devices (tiny, inexpensive hardware, to the extent that even Apple's low-priced and diminutive iPod Nano now sports a camera) would have pushed the cost of the system up. Perhaps that's the case - it certainly brings us neatly to the question of cost, at least.

The PSPgo is too expensive. Vastly too expensive, for what the system is - nothing more than an existing PSP in a nice case, with the UMD drive removed and a bit of cheap flash memory slapped on in its place. There's precious little extra functionality, no new headline feature to shout about - no camera, no touchscreen, no GPS, no 3G connectivity. It's just a PSP with a big memory card and a nice bit of industrial design. In itself, that's not a terrible thing - but what I've just described should be positioned at the same price point as the previous PSP models, which should then receive a price drop to open up a new market segment. Instead, PSPgo is being positioned in a "premium" segment of the handheld market - a segment of which, to be blunt, I'm not convinced of the existence, at least not in any great scale.

The irony is that the question marks and uncertainty around PSPgo contrast most strongly with another recent Sony hardware release - the universally acclaimed PS3 Slim. This was exactly how hardware redesigns and relaunches should be handled. Announced only weeks before hitting retail, the PS3 Slim created huge excitement in a short ...

News via http://emu-russia.net/en/

The best Sega Mega Drive/32X/CD/Master System/Game Gear emulator for Windows has been updated. Changes:
- Made some changes to the config options. Hopefully this fixes a problem some people were having where Windows would fail to size the window correctly, although I cannot reproduce this problem.
- Moved SMS controls into main controls window, matching the other builds.
- Fixed a couple of problems relating to SMS controls.
- Fixed preferred country detection order - at some point a couple of them got switched somehow.
- Various SMS fixes.
- A few minor 32X bugfixes and tweaks.

http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index.php?page=Kega ...

The next Xbox 360 dashboard update, which will include Facebook, Twitter and Last.FM integration, is going into public beta later this month, according to a Microsoft representative at today's Microsoft Open House event in New York City.

Jennifer Puzio-Brookes, an Entertainment Manager for Xbox, showed off the update in a behind-closed-doors session, and it seemed to include all of the major features promised in Microsoft's E3 press conference. Puzio-Brookes mentioned that a public beta will be released "middle-towards-end of October."

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/...ng-this-month/ ...

news via pspita

mc707 issue a useful program for PC called Eboot Patcher. This application will allow you, once decrypted file EBOOT.bin games that require firmware 5:55 with programs like Game Decrypter or PRXdecrypter, to patch this file to make the game compatible with custom firmware 5.00M33, 5.03MHU (ie the Custom Firmware Enabler) and 5.03GEN-A.

Quote:

- Decrypt the EBOOT. Bin the game chosen with Game Decrypter or PRXdecripter (recommended second) and copy the files on PC
- Start PC program Eboot Patcher (the executable is named Patch.exe) and clicking on Browse, select the EBOOT. Bin by patch
- Click on Go! to patch the file

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Tantric has released a new version of his GBA Emulator for Wii/Gamecube:

2.0.8 - October 7, 2009

* Revamped filebrowser and file I/O
* Fixed MBC2 saving/loading
* Fixed some GB-Z80 instructions
* DVD loading in GameCube should work now (untested and unsupported)
* Many, many other bug fixes

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Tantric has released a new version of his Nes Emulator for Wii/Gamecube:

3.1.0 - October 7, 2009

* New default palette - more accurate colors!
* Revamped filebrowser and file I/O
* New timing and frameskip code - allows PAL gamers to play NTSC games
* Fixed FDS/Game Genie errors
* Many, many other bug fixes

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Tantric has released a new version of his Snes Emulator for Wii/Gamecube:

4.1.2 - October 7, 2009

* Revamped filebrowser and file I/O
* Many, many other bug fixes

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Tantric has released a new version of his Snes Emulator for Wii/Gamecube:

4.1.2 - October 7, 2009

* Revamped filebrowser and file I/O
* Many, many other bug fixes

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...