PSP hacking goes a step further

An exploit allowing full PSP games to boot from a memory stick has now been made available.

Since the release of the PSP, hackers have been working hard to turn the handheld into a portable emulator, media player and web browser. Now it appears that hackers have found an exploit in early firmware versions of the handheld, allowing PSP games to be loaded from a memory stick. So far only Archer Maclean's Mercury, Lumines, Coded Arms and Puzzle Bobble are able to be loaded but this is more because of limited memory stick capacity than game incompatibility.

Sony are already combating the exploit, with firmware updates available online and eventually forced updates through games (not installing the update will prevent the game from running). It is unclear if the firmware update will lock out hackers for good or if regular updates will be necessary to keep hackers at bay.