PSP owners have been sorely deprived of any content from Square Enix, the makers of Final Fantasy and one of the reasons the PlayStation ranks so big among the masses. However, things are about to change for Sony's pint-sized powerhouse.

Square Enix has announced Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Portable for the PSP...and, yes, that's all one title. This is a new game in the Itadaki Street series, a (so far) Japan-only board game-style title that plays much like Monopoly and came out for the PS2 back in 2004. This latest chapter in the series will contain elements from both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, two of Square Enix's best-known titles, and is set for a Japanese release this spring.

Namco today announced that Tekken: Dark Resurrection is on its way to the PSP this Summer. This portable entry in the long running series will be a reworked version of the latest arcade revision of Tekken 5.

Dark Resurrection will sport several PSP exclusive features including two new playable characters named Dragunov and Lili. The classic character Armor King, will also appear in Tekken: Dark Resurrection. These three characters will bring the roster up to 30.

Other PSP features will include new movie sequences, new items for character customization and seveal "play anytime, anywhere" game modes.

We'll have more on Tekken: Dark Resurrection soon.

Credit: Gamingtarget.com

When the first PSP came out the initial rage was that it was great for travel, movies, data storage and gaming. Sony was able to get various movie studios to agree to create miniature UMD movies that can be played in the console plus stored in small, portable, cases.

Well, it looks like Sony may have overestimated the market and the studios are reacting by cutting off a lot of films that were supposed to come out for PSP.

PSP Loses Movies

According to Variety, Sony's Playstation Portable is not delivering as originally expected. With sales for UMD movies falling below expectations, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Paramount Home Entertainment and Warner Home Video are cutting back on releases for the PSP.

Since the release of the PSP Sony has encountered two problems that have hurt UMD (Universal Media Disc) sales. First, the market that Sony initially expected turned out to be much more narrow. Instead of avid movie-watchers purchasing the PSP, young gamers would purchase the console and then buy movies that fit their viewing preferences.

Hence, comedies that appeal to the core young male gamers are doing especially well.

The second issue encountered with PSP movies is the fact that PSP owners do not want to own two copies of each movie they enjoy; one DVD and one UMD.

Sony is currently working on this issue by creating an adapter that will allow a UMD movie to be watched on a normal-size television through th PSP. Sony is currently displaying the adapter to the studios to help get them back on board.

Though an adapter would be a great idea for some of the smaller televisions out there, we should only assume that the resolution suffers greatly when placed on any larger television or bigscreen.

Sony is cutting back on new releases and adding to its comedy slate for PSP with Monty Python content and Not Another Teen Movie. The studio realized that comedy was the way to go when Napoleon Dynamite became their top selling UMD.

The studios and Sony also have to deal with the retail outlets that have been slowly cutting down shelf space for UMD movies.

In the end, all sides have become disappointed with the consumer demand at this point in time.

Rebound? Possibly, but the release of PS3 could steal even more attention away from PSP with its new Blue-Ray technology.

Stay tuned for updates.

Credit: CanMag.com

Highlight:
The MPEG-4 Recorder produced by Neuros will provide Sony PSP users with video content.

PSMonkey has gotten great new progress on his port of an N64 emulator for PSP. It's now slightly faster, and also loads a few more games. He's also now working on recoding it from the ground up, with more optimizations and better coding tactics, and will release the source for the homebrew development community once he has a stable release going. Great job PSMonkey!

PSMonkey states, "God bless my gf and her taking over the pc for 20 mins. If not for her I would have not tested out all the PD roms I have on my PSP. Thanks to this I now have 2 count that, 2 brand new demos up and running. They are liners & 1964. Both would actualy progress furter if not for the lack of input/pif emulation.

Tomorrow I plan to test more PD roms and see if others work. At the moment everything else causes the psp to lock up somewhere (and roughly near each other). So hopefuly I can debug and fix this soon.

P.S. The Framerate is around 5.0-7.4 fps. A vast improvement over the previous 1.8 fps i was getting on fire demo."

Furthermore, he goes on to say, "I have today officialy desided, and already underway, to rewrite the emulator from scrach. As most know by now. I have taken up the emulator full time along with Iris (but iris has higher priority to me). Every thing I correct on the emulator in turn makes stuff stop working which is sad. Its like repairing a model house with good glue only to have the crapy glue hate the good glue and fall apart. With the rewrite comes a new name. In the mean time the project will be called M64 for Monkey 64. The project will stay open source because this project only exsist because of the great work of others in the n64 emulation scene. So every build will also include the full source."

Check out his site here:

http://nemo.dcemu.co.uk/

Credit: PSP3D on getting this awesome news :)

Well, apparently that is what they will be calling the online mode for the PS3.  

The service will be called "PlayStation HUB" and it will support "chat, downloadable demos, independent games and online play."
* It will also serve the PSP. Will the seldom utilized infrastructure mode now be called PlayStation HUB mode?
* Good things don't come cheap. The service will be a "subscriber service," similar to Live now. No more free Socom guys. No word on what the details of the subscription will be, but expect equal to or less than Live.
* Sir Howard Stringer, Sony's big boss man, wants the service to dish out media content, like movies and music, positioning the service as an alternative to Apple's wildly popular iTunes store.

I really hope I don't have to pay for online mode :( 

Well, after hearing the news about the PSP getting a future Tekken game, I've kept sort of up to date on it.  Check out these screens for the PSP Version of Tekken, courtesy of duckroll on the GA Forum.

The first such title for PSP, Tekken Dark Resurrection is named after — and based on — the latest arcade game in the series, Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection. The game will feature over 30 characters, including Dragonuv and Lili, two new characters that were added to the arcade game. Also making the PSP cut are new stages, based off original Tekken 5 stages, but with climate and time effects as well as new background objects.

(Note: Not an actual screenshot of the PSP Version)

Namco is making a few additions exclusively for the PSP version. New game modes, including time attack, practice and mini games are all expected. Multiplayer is also expected, but only in Ad-Hoc form. Tekken Dark Resurrection for the PSP is expected this Summer.

Can't wait to go out and rent it to see how good it is on the PSP

Homer has updated the PSPUpdates forums with his latest modifications of Mr. Mirakichi’s original Gameboy/Gameboy Color Emulator for the PSP. Homer has been working on improving RIN for use on PSP’s with 2.01+ firmware and so far it has been working pretty well. Sound is still out of the picture and probably will not be available until changes are made to Fanjita and Ditlew’s eLoader. Here are the small fixes for this release: