Sony’s amazing PlayStation Portable handheld gaming console has held sway over many gamers – mostly hardcore – who wish to take their PlayStation or PC gaming experience on the road. With its sleek design, powerful processor and great features apart from gaming, the console was an immediate hit.
The Xross Media Bar (XMB) was the UI that made the PSP as close to the original PS2 as possible, and with its amazing speed, it also came with great customization in the form of themes – customized icons that could be made into the XMB’s interface as well as a custom wallpaper. Although initially this was given only to certain companies, Sony made a free PSP theme creator available as a simple and free download to everyone interested in making the themes.
Sony’s free PSP theme creator is an easy to use, simply designed program that is also a tiny download at around 130 kilobytes. Available from Sony’s official guide page the theme creator has a very intuitive interface that makes you upload a specific icon and shows it next to the original icon – this way graphic designers can easily compare their versions with the original and know how well it would look with the PSP. However, the PSN bar as well as the LocationFree Player, Skype and Internet Radio buttons cannot be modified – so they stick out occasionally.
Installing PSP theme on Sony PSP Series
The theme is saved as a PTH file (Playstation Theme file) that is used by the PSP to recognize a theme file. All you need to do after making the theme file is to navigate to the /PSP/THEME folder in your PSP’s memory stick duo and copy the .PTH file into it. Once this is done you have to go to Settings -> Theme Settings -> Theme and select the theme you want (aptly named and with a small preview, of course!) and apply it. The system will ask for a conformation and once it is done, you will be able to see your PSP theme in full glory!
You can also search for a lot of great PSP themes online – there are full websites dedicated to creating and sharing PSP themes to users. PSP themes.net is a great place to look at, while there are quite a few others as well that have great themes. But, this still does not answer the best question of them all – why would anybody want to change a theme filled with tasty cookies?
