PSP Cheats & hacks – Sony PSP Games, Themes, Wallpapers, Cheat Downloads

A new study involving a survey of ten year old children suggests that games such as Brain Training and Brain Academy don’t actually improve your intelligence. Alan Lieury, a professor at the University of Rennes in France, said that: “The Nintendo DS is a technological jewel. As a game it’s fine, but it is charlatanism to claim that it is a scientific test.” Charlatanism, folks.

During the experiment, the kids were asked to perform a few cognitive functions like completing logic tests and memorizing lists of words. The researchers compared the results of children who practiced using games on the Nintendo DS versus those are practiced with standard pencil and paper exercises. In the memory exercise, the kids using the Nintendo DS were as high as 17 percent more effective overall after utilizing the DS applications.

As to why the experiments elected to use kids instead of adults, professor Lieury states that “that’s the age where you have the best chance of improvement. If it doesn’t work on children, it won’t work on adults.”

We’re not convinced. Everyone knows that playing video games turns your brain into an enormous, throbbing vessel of infinite knowledge.

The NPD Group has published some much-anticipated sales figures from the US game industry. The list includes numbers for both hardware and software sales. Nintendo stays on top of hardware sales with strong showings from both the Wii and the DS. Here’s the full list for your math-addled brains to digest:

US Hardware in December 2008 (Expected sales in parentheses)

• Nintendo DS: 3,040,000 (2,670,000)
• Wii: 2,150,000 (3,030,000)
• Xbox 360: 1,440,000 (1,420,000)
• PSP: 1,020,000 (935,000)
• PS3: 726,000 (757,000)

Nintendo titles win out in software sales, too, owning five of the ten spots overall:

US Software in December 2008 (Expected sales in parentheses)

Wii Play: 1,460,000 (1,350,000)

Call of Duty: World at War (Xbox 360): 1,330,000 (799,000)

1. Wii Fit: 999,000
2. Mario Kart (Wii): 979,900
3. Guitar Hero World Tour (Wii): 850,000
4. Gears of War 2: 745,000 (799,000)
5. Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360): 629,000
6. Mario Kart DS: 540,000
7. Call of Duty World at War (PlayStation 3): 533,000
8. Animal Crossing: City Folk: 497,000

We’ll stay plugged in to the statistics sources in order to report more clutch industry numbers as they drop.

Here it is from the rumor mill, folks: Word has it that Sony is overseeing a survey asking gamers’ opinions regarding future PSP hardware and potential software functionalities that may appear on future systems.

Someone apparently in the know sent word over that participants in the Sony-conducted survey had to rank some features that are currently not available on the PSP. Some purported stuff on the list: Built-in GPS, Bluetooth wireless, internal data storage, and…a touchscreen!

Here’s a more detailed list of possible PSP stuff that appears in the survey:

• Was smaller, yet retained most of the current PSP’s screen size
• Offered social networking functionality on the XMB
• Included a keyboard for easer internet browsing and communication
• Offered Bluetooth wireless support for easy pairing with other devices
• Had a touch screen
• Had an imprved screen for more dynamic graphic displays
• Offered the ability to find others near you who want to connect for online gaming
• Offered an e-comic/book download service through the PlayStation Network
• Included a hard drive for memory storage

For now, this is still, like we said, fodder from the rumor mill. Keep your eyes glued to this website, though, and we’ll keep you up-to-date with more concrete news as it drops.

For a company that’s been caught up in the global economic poop storm, more bad times are forthcoming. According to sources at the Nikkei business daily, Sony, whose profit estimates for the year were around US$ 2.2 billion, is expected to announce a loss of US$ 1.1 billion.

This news drops in the context of a year of bad news tidbits from the corporation, who lowered their operating profit from 475 billion last October to 200 billion. Also, the lay-off of 16,000 employees now seems inevitable.

News about how this will affect development for the PS3, the PSP, and new systems on the horizon has yet to drop, but we’ll stay tuned for clues that the company is preparing any big changes to compensate for their fiscal woes. Hopefully, we’ll see some new innovations for their current platforms in order for them to stay briskly competitive in the next several quarters. That can only mean good things for us, their adoring fans! Don’t let us down, corporate dudes. Stay tuned for more news as it drops.

CES showed off a new application on the PSP that transforms it into a Wi-Fi remoter control that can handle networked audio streams from the Sony-brand audio receiver.

With the application, users can adjust settings, set up and oversee playlists, and browse audio libraries right on the PSP. The XMB drives the interface in the standard implementation.

They’re still beta-testing this, so the public release hasn’t necessarily been promised for any specific date. Other software has tried out the notion of a remote control on the PSP, but hopefully this one will take advantage of the collective knowledge to produce an application that’s ready for prime time. More news as it drops.