An exciting tidbit half-hidden behind the disappointing “PS3 in November” news from Sony earlier this morning: an official Flash solution for PSP is coming this spring!

Needless to say, we’re giddy at the thought. Will it be Flash Lite 2, as recently rumored, or something else? Apparently we’ll all know soon!

Editorial follows…

I missed an earlier chance to post “me too” links to the awe-inspiring homebrew SWF player, and I deeply respect the DIY spirit behind such community efforts. But as a chronic upgrader who actually buys and plays PSP games, I was fated to lock myself out of that community by upgrading to firmware 2.6 and beyond. So it wasn’t the news I was waiting for — this official release is.

There’s a tinge of outrage among some in the PSP homebrew community at this news, but I think a new era in PSP homebrew is beginning — the Flash people are coming! There will now be a legitimate avenue and toolset for regular people to make their PSP do whatever they want, and to do so without crashing GTA or breaking the EULA.

This has to be a big win for Flash on devices as well — in the US at least, finding a smartphone capable of running a decent version of Flash is difficult and expensive. The PSP may not be in everyone’s hands, but it is relatively ubiquitous, and if you assume Flash will have access to all the system’s present and future capabilities (big screen, media playback, WiFi, GPS, camera) then the possibilities are mind-boggling.

And I won’t have to learn Lua.

(Editorial comments by Christoph.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 8:55 am and is filed under Culture, Meta, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.