In the second installment of my series of articles, I’ve decided to tackle something a little more different, the PSP Homebrew Scene. This was motivated by the surgence of a thread here at MfM during the day. This is an analysis of the scene in the past and now. Don’t expect an history lesson Also, this article will not be as good as the last one, it’s just something I had to get out of my system.

Introduction:

Subject to a lot of love and hatred, the most controversial thing about the PSP isn’t its marketing or its games, or even the way Sony has neglected it’s own portable platform in the past. It’s the Homebrew Scene.

Still, one cannot talk about the Homebrew Scene without first explaining what homebrew is. According to Wikipedia:

Homebrew is a term frequently applied to video games or other software produced by consumers to target proprietary hardware platforms not typically user-programmable or that use proprietary storage methods. This might include games developed with official development kits, such as Net Yaroze or Linux for PlayStation 2. Some more frequently used labels, such as freeware, are often applied as well.

When it comes to the PSP, Homebrew has been developed in the form of games and applications, but I’ll get into that later. Now it’s time for a history lesson.

A Brief History of the PSP Homebrew Scene

With the release of the PSP, is wasn’t too long before fans recognized all the untapped potential of the small handheld powerhouse and quickly found that the console could run unsigned code on it (only on firmware 1.00) and a SDK for homebrew development purposes.

But Sony quickly striked back with the release of FW 1.50 and so homebrew developers quickly had to find new ways to crack the firmwares so they could keep on having homebrew on the PSP and this is still going on nowadays, but others intentions and a more advanced SDK.

The usefulness of Homebrew in the past

Soon after the PSP’s launch it seemed like Sony wasn’t going to support the system as well as it could. Efforts were put more into supporting the PS2 and the creation of the PS3 and vaporware like Gran Turismo made lots of people think they had invested $250/250€ fro naught.

That’s where homebrew started to rise. The homebrew scene brought people who wanted to use their PSP’s something to use it for: emulators, applications and small simple games like pong and arkanoid clones were all the rage.

With the passing of time, you had emulators for almost all system except from the Sega Saturn onwards, you homebrew versions of games like Dance Dance Revolution and even ports of games like Doom and Quake were at the tip of your fingers.

When it came to applications you had stuff like notepad clones, music players that extended the variety of supported types on your PSP, video players that supported other formats than MP4, others allowed you to read PDF and Manga and some even turned your PSP into a PDA-like machine. It was every user’s dream. As long as your PSP was homebrew-enabled you could have everything you wanted to.

The “Dark” Side of the Scene

Whilst most people used homebrew for legit purposes, small minorities used the advantages of homebrew to dump and play games without paying for them, but for a while, that really wasn’t an issue.

That was before Pandora’s box was opened and all the evils were released among the goods it brought. Pandora opened homebrew to a lot of users that were waiting for the next exploit to be found, but it also made piracy a common day thing: people asked for money to “pandorize” other people’s PSP’s promising them the oasis of getting all the games they wanted without having to pay for them.

Still, many people say piracy was never a problem on the PSP, but quickly game developers started dropping support for the PSP using piracy as an excuse, while its rival the DS got bigtime titles like the revamped Prince of Persia game and Final Fantasy remakes (III and IV).

But in the words of a famous and respected PSP Homebrew Developer, Fanjita:

Everyone has the right to do what they want with their own hardware. Piracy does upset me, and because what we are doing opens the way to piracy it’s harder to justify it morally. But our stance on piracy is clear, and we hope to be role models. Sony have never been in touch with me, so I am confident that what we are doing is legal.

“Drama” in the Scene

One of the backfires of being a PSP Homebrew Developer was that sometimes you got disrespected for the work you made for others free of charge, by the same people that you developed it for. The other obvious backfire was that many people came into the scene, stealing other people’s work and only changing the credits. These people were labeled as lamers.

Lamer:
Someone who cluelessly (or in some cases pridefully) does things to piss off an established community, usually on the internet.

The other issues related to the PSP Homebrew Scene were the scenes of internet drama between developers that only served to create confusion, discord and even mistrust between developers.

Internet Drama:
Silly, stupid, or idiotic dramatics that take place in internet interactions between people that would never happen in real life or real person-to-person interaction.
The PSP Homebrew Scene in 2009 and the future

The PSP Homebrew Scene in 2009 and the future

At the current time, the PSP Homebrew Scene is pretty much dead and all the great developers from the past are retired, all releases in homebrew scene are related to running ISO format games without having to update your PSP.

The last great breakthrough in the homebrew scene was Davee’s 5.03 HEN which opened homebrew to a lot of users that owned TA-088v3 Slim PSP units and TA-090v2 Brite PSP units.

What the future holds from this point on is for anyone to guess, but it doesn’t look like revitalization is on the way. Still, hope is the last one to die and maybe all hope is not lost. My mind though, is focused on the PSP Minis in which I see a lot of potential for great things and which I perceive as the future of homebrew development.

[This article is just the opinion of one man and an opinion is worth just that. All feedback is welcome, any suggestions or correction can be stated in the comments or via PM]