The latest titles out stateside will required the upgrade 1.5 to work, and will therefore help crack down on those attempting to hack the PSP. Recently, hackers have managed to get emulators and other home-made software running on the system, but we're told these utilities will be disabled with the new upgrade. Said update is of course downloadable over WiFi, and will also be included on the UMD discs of new titles like Midnight Club 3, Dead To Rights: Reckoning and Coded Arms. Of course hackers will be eager to try and keep pace with Sony's upgrades, but could find it a struggle with Sony plotting innumerable updates in the future.

We're already hearing talk of a web browser being added as well as an email client and utilities like a calculator in future upgrades, which will no doubt also impact Japanese PSPs, and future European consoles too. With this cunning move Sony are certainly trying to keep one step-ahead of the hackers shoe-horning unlicensed software onto their new baby, and will hope to drive gamers towards official titles, rather than downloadable freebies as a result. More on the progress of the PSP as we get it.

By Luke Guttridge