14 DAY TRIAL // Sony, through its official PlayStation Portable blog, has announced that those who have a PSP can now download and apply a new firmware update, known as 5.51. Sony is only saying that it has released it so that some of the features of the handheld can now benefit from more stability.
Unfortunately, as it often does, Sony is not willing to talk about what applications are affected and what the enhanced stability really means to those who use the PlayStation Portable.
After the last major update, labeled 5.50, Sony was quiet on its handheld for quite some time. Those who use it did not report any new problems or any big bugs affecting the platform and this year will see many games coming out for it, which is good news for its survival. So, the new update came as a surprise to most gamers and Sony is only prolonging the confusion by not talking about the changes made through it.
There's also a real chance that firmware update 5.51 might be one of the last coming to the classic PlayStation Portable as Sony is probably more concerned with putting the final touches on the PlayStation Portable Go!, a new hardware platform unveiled at the Los Angeles E3 trade show and which is set to arrive on store shelves sometime during this autumn. The fresh platform will only get content through digital distribution, eliminating one of the biggest problems the PSP has had since launch, piracy.
Sony is saying that it will continue to support the classic PlayStation Portable for quite some time, with all the new videogame releases both as digital packages and on the UMD disk drive, but firmware updates will probably be few and far between for the old platform.