Looking to develop PSP games, the Sony-approved (or, not so approved) way? eBay seller "emceemoney" has informed us that he has managed to get his dirty hands on a working, official PSP development platform; the same tool used by corporate game developers to develop all the great retail games we see in stores.



The catch? Well, we're not sure. Bidding will likely skyrocket once the auction grabs some publicity (at $329.00 with 1 day and 22 hours remaining at time of news post). There is no mention of included software, which may, or may not, render this official development platform useless.

From what we've gathered, this station is used to both test and compile games for the PSP. It is not clear whether or not work-in-progress games are stamped with the official Sony digital signing algorithm (allowing it to work on the PSP without the need of homebrew hacks) with this hardware, but the winner of this auction will likely gather some sort of cool information that could be used for the benefit of the homebrew community. Makes for one heck of an awesome Christmas gift!

Update: It appears the auction got pulled from eBay. Looks like Sony caught on pretty quickly; the official PSP development platform had to have something in it that could compromise the firmware and/or homebrew capabilities. As far as we know, each one of these kits is contractually sold to game developers, which is most probably the reason it was pulled.

Furthermore, here's a screencap of the auction, for those who didn't get a chance to check it out before Sony pulled it down:


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[Check out the auction]

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