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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

As usual, it ends up being about emulators instead of creating new stuff.

There isn't much incentive in making new stuff when it can be shut down by Sony or whatever company at any moment. See A2MR.

It was basically porting emulators instead of actually producing new stuff that proved Sony PS2Linux wasn't worthwhile to produce, thus all the stuff it happened afterwards with Linux on PS3 (which contrary to PS2Linux lacked hardware acceleration), and adopting FreeBSD.

Why create new games for a proprietary platform that users would have to hack instead of just writing it for PC? Homebrew like this is about the challenge or about making existing hardware more useful, porting emulators is an effective way to do that.

>>Why create new games for a proprietary platform that users would have to hack instead of just writing it for PC?

Well, PSP(and DS/3DS) homebrew scenes were(and still are) amazing, with many brand new games created from scratch, even though any potential users have to hack their devices in the first place to even try them.

The PSP existed in the short timeframe where all the alternative handheld devices were vastly inferior in terms of specs and cost to perf ratio. The choice between an expensive WinCE PDA that barely had hardware 3D vs the beast that is a hacked PSP was obvious.

Then came Android/ios and bothering with a hacked PSP was no longer worth it for general computing purposes. Running "backups" and emulators prevailed as the only reason to mod a handheld.

Why buy this in first place then? Just use a PC and save the money for something that really matters.

I presume people bought it for its intended usecase, or just as a novelty. I don't think anyone's buying this for emulation, not when there are friendlier options available for the same price. Once they already have it, though...

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