If you are looking in CraigsList or Ebay to buy a second hand PSP you will quickly find ads offering to unbrick, unlock or mod your PSP, with offers like:

Have a bricked PSP phat/slim? Want custom firmware or games? Feel free to email me or give me a call. I can fix your BRICKED psp and put CUSTOM Firmware of your choice which allow you to play homebrew games/apps, CSO/ISO,emulators (SNES,NES,Sega,Atari etc.)Movies, PMF/MP3 player and just completely unlock the full potential of your PSP)

Although we found that the cost of this service varies - in most places the charge is around $20.

But why would anyone unlock their PSP? Can all PSPs be modded? Is it legal? Is it easy to use homebrew and emulators? And WHO gets their PSP modded?

We decided to go to the source and interview a local PSP modder to get some answers, and here is what we discovered:

* The main reasons people mod their PSP are :

1) be able to make backups of their PSP games,

2) Get free homebrew games,

3) load an emulator so they can play nintendo and Atari games,

4) get copyright games for free (eg God Of War was one that the modder we interviewed included in his price - this last is definitely illegal)

* Not all PSPs can be modded. The new 3000 can’t be unlocked (yet?), and the plain black 2000 is unlockable. The easiest to mod is the original phat PSP. Of the slim models, the white and silver have a 90% chance of being modded and the blue and red PSPs have about a 70% success rate of being modded.

* Getting your PSP modded is not illegal. But our source warned that if your PSP has to be sent to Sony for repairs they will update the software to the official Sony software and you will have to get it modded again.

* According to our source, its easy to use emulators and download and play homebrew games. (We will go into this in more detail in later posts)

Our interest is in being able to try out the homebrew games. Sony could well take a look at how Microsoft has brought the radical inventors in from the cold. They have established a self governing community where homebrew games can be showcased and trialed and critiqued and eventually sold as legitimate games!

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