Two days ago, the Playstation Vita was officially released in Europe and in the US. If you follow this blog, you know I’ve been bragging a lot recently about how we can run PSP homebrew on the Vita, using VHBL, through an exploit in the PSP emulator.

I’ve also said I would wait for the EU/US release of the Vita before releasing this port of HBL. It’s already been two days, Wololo, so what the F…?

Well, if you have a good memory, you’ll also remember that I mentioned many times how this exploit would be easy to patch, and how a public release of HBL would directly lead to sony patching the vulnerability(ies) involved in this hack. And I’m still convinced this will happen, but I’ve decided to fight against this the best possible way I could think of. I cannot disclose too much details, but trust me when I say I’ve rarely been as active as in the past two days, in order to make sure this HBL release is happening smoothly. You guys are worried of getting the hack or not, I on the other hand, am worried of getting thousands of people to buy a game and see Sony patch the exploit before anybody can use it (that’s waaay too much pressure for a simple PSP homebrew loader). This risk exists, and I am trying my best to minimize it. The process is going on (things such as, actually testing VHBL on non Japanese versions of the game,…), and I cannot stress enough that lots of the details cannot be described for now, but hopefully when the release happens you guys will understand what I’ve tried to do. I’m not pretending I can outsmart Sony, or that my plan will work flawlessly, but I’ll try my best. Some things, so far, are going very smoothly, others are not, Sony took some steps (maybe unknowingly) that will make HBL more difficult to run for some people, but again I cannot give too much details on that.

People are asking me if I can give a precise date of “when” I will announce the name of the game and/or release the HBL files. The answer to that is no, for various reasons, because the fuzziness here is part of my humble plan. I’m just saying it will happen, this whole thing is not a fake, and I’m doing my best for it to happen as soon as possible.

Some people are asking me if I can at least give hints on the price, or the quality of the game, or stuff like that… I’m sorry, I can’t. I know it’s important to some of you, to plan your PSN card purchases, etc, but to me (that’s a really personal opinion because I am deeply involved in this release) it’s important to not mess this up. Maybe I could give some hints now, maybe it wouldn’t be too big a deal, but many people, not only me, have kept this exploit a secret for a looong time, so I would hate myself if I completely screw up this release (I’m using the opportunity to thank the few people who know about this exploit and haven’t leaked anything yet, it’s great to be able to trust you guys, you know who you are). To give a better example, if you send me 3 emails from 3 different addresses and ask me 3 different questions about the price, you could probably narrow it down to a list of a few games, and I can’t know if you work for Sony or something… Keep in mind that I don’t care, I have the exploit already, so I’m not doing this (not giving the price) because I hate you or anything.

Some people are afraid that they’ll go to bed, and when they wake up it’s too late because Sony patched the exploit. Yes, this could happen, but the release process I have in mind aims at making this unlikely. I’m hoping the time between me making this public and Sony taking any measure will be a matter of days rather than hours. I’m thinking, among other things, about what happened for the hot shots golf exploit, where Sony actually took weeks to fix the issue. After all, they were selling a game, and nobody was doing any piracy, so maybe at that time they understood it was a win-win situation. Bottom line, don’t stop sleeping for this, I would feel really bad about that!

One thing is clear to me: some people won’t have access to this exploit. What I’m doing now is my best to make sure that people who are following this blog these days will get access to the exploit. Among other things, I am trying to find a balance between releasing this as soon as possible, but also not screw people who are still waiting for the Vita to actually be shipped to their place.

A final word: what I will be distributing is just HBL, a loader for psp homebrews. You can already run PSP homebrews from a regular PSP, with a better compatibility rate, and for a cheaper price. So please, don’t get too excited. I don’t want people to come back at me after they try it, and tell me “wow, it’s difficult to use, I’m constantly afraid that Sony will patch it so I’m never using the PSN anymore, only half of the homebrews I tried are working, and this doesn’t have any access to the Vita hardware…”. Yes, I’m aware of that, and I’m sure much better and convenient hacks will come in the future, so please, please, keep that in mind when you get (or not) access to the info.

Many of you have waited for weeks for this release, I’m asking everyone to be just a little more patient, thanks a lot for your understanding 🙂