Even though I had called it out in the article, several people have questioned the fact that the VitaPong homebrew released a few days ago can be called a “Native” PS Vita homebrew.

First of all, I want to emphasize that I did not call it a “native homebrew”, but a “homebrew using the Native exploit”. I tend to choose my words carefully, so apologies if people felt misled here, this was not intentional.

Another important point is that one thing we’ve always tried to promote here on wololo.net, is the people who make efforts to push the scene further.

I have encountered countless devs on the scene who belittle tiny progress, because it is not a “breakthrough”. But at the end of the day, it’s also the little things that count. A personal example is that HBL/VHBL would have never seen the light of day if it hadn’t been for me doing some of the boring/non hack work: cleaning up the makefile, making HBL portable to other games, porting HBL to the Vita, etc… I have received some heavy criticism, from people I considered as friends, for claiming to be a major part of HBL/VHBL’s success. But I’ll stand my ground: if it hadn’t been for me, HBL and VHBL would have never been used by the end users.

Whether the end user matters or not to you is a different story. To me, they do. If it wasn’t for the users, most devs wouldn’t bother, at least that’s my opinion: a program or hack without users is not complete. In space, no one will hear you compile.

In the context of the native Webkit exploit, and vitasploit, I am well aware that progress appears to be slower than what most people would like. And I’ll take the small victories. Yes, the only “native” part of the Pong game released yesterday is the motion control access. Is it a Pong homebrew? Yes. Does it use the Native exploit? Yes. Does it do things that would not be possible on a non-hacked Vita? As far as I can tell, yes, unless proven otherwise.

So in that regard, it’s matching all the criteria I set to earn the $20 PSN prize. And if some people can do better, please do so! This is the whole goal of the prizes and contests I organize regularly here: to keep people motivated to make some progress, no matter how small. Realistic goals is how things can be achieved. If I had asked people to come up with a full native Doom port for the Vita, people would probably have laughed at me.

So I know it’s not much, but this is how I can contribute to the scene these days.

So, was this a fully native homebrew? Definitely not. But it surely is nice to see cool stuff happening out there 🙂