Lumines sells like delicious hotcakes due to hacking ability
By Andrew on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 11:23 PM PST In Portable, Sony
The PSP puzzle game Lumines released last June jumped 5900% in sales on Amazon.com after gamers learned they could utilize it to hack their PSP. After following directions posted on noobz.com, players can download and play homebrew games on their Playstation Portable, for all firmware versions from 1.0 to 3.5.
However, the only homebrew currentlyavailable is the boringly titled “Hello World,” which is really just the equivalent of the crackers saying, “We did it!” There are plans to release a Homebrew Enabler and a downgrader. The out-of-print video game is currently outselling everything in Amazon’s Video Games category except Mario Party 8 and the Nintendo Wii. It looks like gamers are excited about the opportunity to play what they want with whatever they want. Maybe the video game industry will someday take heed.
“Maybe the video game industry will someday take heed.”
In some ways, I think the Wii Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, and Playstation network attempt to cash in on the market for things like emulation and homebrew. It is important to note that the industry will only take heed if there is a financial incentive for them to do so.