Settings and Wifi fun
Once turned on, the PSP defaults to the main screen where several icons lead you to various sub-menus, all accessible using the direction arrows and action buttons. The first of the main icons is Settings, then you’ve got Photo, Music, Video and Game. Settings handles all the mundane stuff for your PSP, such as date and time etc. A nice touch is the background colour of the screen changes depending on which month you’re in, which is fine until you get to April with its cerise pink backdrop… not very manly for a tough uber-geek like myself…
You can enter details to connect to a known network or scan for available networks and go warchalking!The network settings sub menu allows you to configure your PSP for your Wifi network if you have one, which is very handy for updates etc and essential for WAN gaming. Two modes, Ad-hoc and Infrastructure are available for p2p gaming or hooking up onto a LAN. These are a doddle to set-up and within about 5 minutes I had the PSP on my LAN.
Hooking up to a network is a doddle, as this screen shows…
… and there’s the PSP on my router’s client listUsing the ad-hoc mode, you can connect your PSP to others in the area for multiplayer gaming fun. Superbly, depending on the game, you can temporarily share your game with other on the network with you, so only one person need own the game you all want to play. Everyone just downloads the files they need to play and vice versa then you’re all off on a multiplayer fest. This is a great idea and one that should help boost the PSP’s sales as not needing to own every game your mates have to be able to play against them is a big plus and a big draw for the platform. The function is down to developer though, so some will support it while others may insist on every player having a copy.
Connectivity to others is a breeze and pretty much automatic, as is the file sharing to play games. Reception seems to go quite a distance too, with opposite ends of a busy pub proving to be no problem at all. Sharing a game and playing wirelessly does knock your battery times down quite considerably though, with perhaps 2 ½ to 3 hours time on Wifi.
Sony will be releasing the Korean version with full web-browsing capability straight out of the box via Wifi and a deal with a Korean telecoms company. Let’s hope they do the same here as we have the BT Openzone network to mention one ISP that you could hook your PSP up to. There is a hack to use the PSP as a web browser by taking advantage of the flaw in Wipeout, but to be honest, its damn fiddly and I’d rather wait for either a third party to produce software for it or for Sony to release something that does the job properly.