United States gets the Sony Playstation Portable 2.0 firmware upgrade

United States gets the Sony Playstation Portable 2.0 firmware upgrade

Entertainment giant and the makers of the gaming machine Playstation Sony have finally launched their firmware upgrade for the Sony Playstation Portable in the United States. The launched was delayed by the company for unexplained reasons. The company is now providing the download through the Network Update feature on the PSP, and requires 16MB of free space on the PSP’s Memory Stick Pro Duo to download.

Users can of course also download it from the Sony’s website onto their computers and than transfer it to their PSPs for manual installation. The original launch date was set to August 12 and Sony had postponed it to August 15. However, the update has only been launched today. Sony had launched this update in their domestic market of Japan last month and the American owners of PSP were desperately waiting for their own localized update.

The new update brings web browser ability to the Sony PSP in addition to support for .264 (AVC) video playback. PSP can also now open TIFF, GIF, PNG, and BMP image files; new music format support including WAV and unprotected AAC files. In addition, users can use these images and other photos as wallpapers for their PSPs. However, Sony has also taken some steps in this update to prevent hacking of the gaming machine to run unauthorized third party softwares.

There are many applications available in the market, which are capable of developing software for this platform. Sony just wants to keep them out of their product in the small screen gaming device segment.