The biggest event on the PS Vita hacking scene so far was Total_Noob’s release of his TN Hen for Vita, almost a year ago. Naysayers can keep saying this is “not good enough”, but his hack brought a full PSP CFW to the Vita, meaning support of dozens of emulators, hundreds of PSP homebrews and utilities, plugins, and (need I mention it?) psp isos… including support for games you love that will never be available on the PSN Store for obscure contractual reasons.

People who’ve tasted the joy of using TN Hen on their Vita have had a hard time giving it up in order to upgrade. A while ago, Total_Noob announced he would be back with another PSP Kernel exploit (and HEN) running on the Vita of course. He eventually stated that he would wait for the PS4 to be available before he would consider a release. His goal was clear: make sure the Vita firmware you will be “stuck” on to enjoy his exploit will also let you use your Vita with the PS4.

Today, with the PS4 release approaching, what do we know about the upcoming TN-V ?

• Most likely, it will have all the features you typically expect from the type of tool: psp iso support, plugins, homebrews, etc… Total_Noob however mentioned a while ago that the extra ram support has been disabled in recent Vita firmware updates (so we’ll probably be limited to 32MB instead of 64MB… for some homebrews this can be a big deal, but in general this shouldn’t be too much of an issue)

• Total_Noob will not release this before the PS4, for the benefit of the scene, he is waiting for a “useful” Vita firmware update

• TN-V 4 will not be a silver bullet. It will rely on a PSP kernel exploit, that Sony will probably patch easily with a firmware update. People who want to keep the hack will have to basically renounce the many online features of the Vita. Tough choice, probably, but if you’ve enjoyed TN’s work before, and knowing that there aren’t that many psp kernel exploits around, you know you’ll consider it

• TN-V 4 will not magically let you pirate Vita games.

• Total_Noob aims at making his work compatible with as many usermode exploits as possible. People who have had access in the past to our previous Ninja releases will most likely have a chance to get TN-V 4 to replace their current VHBL install, assuming the community does its job: Total_Noob has asked us to help porting his work to the existing exploits, here.

• I believe, if things are timed right, that TN-V 4 could even be compatible with the Vita TV… there’s no reason to believe the Vita TV would have a firmware too different from that of the Vita.

Stay tuned for a release date!

TN-V 4 screenshot on Vita 2.61 courtesy of hackinformer