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Dark_Alex leaving homebrew scene. PSP fanboys across the world cry aloud.

I haven't been able to scourer the net like I usually do. It was a very busy weekend. So here I am in the middle of the night checking my favorite sites when I see some of the most disturbing news a PSP fanboy could ever read. Dark_Alex, one of the pioneers in making the PSP the machine that Sony refused to make it is calling it quits. He is hacker over in Spain that would take the firmware that Sony put out and open it up to allow homebrew to be played as well as making improvements to the PSP before Sony could officially release them. Check out his site here. This is what is on the site:

"Bye, scene.

I've decided to cease OE development, and leave PSP scene. The reasons are various.

One of them is the time it consumes, which i'm losing from other things.
The other is related to my security. I didn't like Sony menaces to PS3 hackers.
I think it is better to leave now rather than end paying the consequences."

His "Bye, scene" opening line reminded me of when MJ sent the "I'm back" memo out when he returned to basketball, but with a much darker tone.

I was never really overly impressed with the PSP when it first came out. My brother had one at launch, and after the sexiness of it wore off I pretty much forgot about it. Until I heard about the emulators. I had been playing some emulators on my PC of some of the old SNES games that I had loved, and I really liked the idea of having games that I use to play available to me. Somewhere along the line I heard about people doing this on the PSP. As I researched this I noticed that the homebrew scene was much more then running emulators. People were actually creating programs to turn the PSP into many others things.

I found that many people had made some great apps for the PSP. IRDA keyboards were running on the PSP. PSP radio allowed you to stream internet radio to the PSP. Timers and other useful things were also available. This type of thing was really up my alley. I wanted to run these things on a PSP and that is why I bought one and fell in love with it. I downgraded and added the Dark_Alex custom firmware as soon as I could.

One of the first things that I did was to take all my PSOne games and turn them into files that would fit on my PSP. I soon had great games like Gran Turismo and Metal Gear Solid on my PSP. This was made possible by Dark_Alex. Sony had the official emulator in the PSP's firmware, but had it locked so that it would only play titles off the PSN. Dark_Alex made it so that I could take the games that I still had and put them on my memory stick. He did many things like this for the community. He unlocked the 333 MHZ on the processor way before Sony officially released it in its firmware. He also unlocked the screen resolution before Sony did.

I think that Sony should thank people like Dark_Alex for what he has done for the PSP. He has provided a service to the community that Sony could only dream of. Without what he did for the PSP I would have never bought one. Dark_Alex I thank you.

I know that Sony's real problem is with people running pirated games off of the PSP with the custom firmwares. I totally understand that this is detrimental to the platform. This is their main issue with the homebrew scene. Maybe Sony can involve the homebrew scene more and take the creativity that these hackers have and use it to make the PSP a better mobile platform that can compete with the likes of the iPhone, iPod, and the DS.