If you’ve been running a hacked PS4 on firmwares 4.xx, you might be wondering if it’s worth updating to firmware 5.05 in order to get the latest PS4 hack. While at the end of the day, the decision’s entirely up to you, here are a few points as food for thoughts.

1. With the Mira project, 5.05 looks promising, then again…

The team behind the 5.05 exploit and project Mira want to change the way the scene thinks about hacks, and hopefully this will lead to more homebrew applications for 5.05 down the line. Then again, although Mira was initially only for 5.01/5.05, it’s been ported to 4.55 for now, so you can already get most of its benefits if you stay on 4.55.

Additionally, a few hackers have stated that the 5.05 exploit is less stable than the 4.55 one. Now, don’t get this statement wrong: it only means that it might be harder to run the exploit successfully. But once it has run correctly, your 5.05 exploited PS4 is theoretically as good as a 4.55 exploited PS4.

2. 5.05 is where it will be, 4.55 is still where it is?

I expect a lot of developers to push for 5.05 homebrew development. I assume we’ll have a lot more tinkerers on 5.05 than we ever had so far, so this is where the audience will be ultimately for homebrew developers. Here again, I also think the Open Orbis team will push full steam for 5.05 support for now (at least those in the project who are not actively looking for 5.5x hacks, ha!)

The important word however is “will be”. For now, a lot of apps and homebrews exist for 4.55, and it’s unclear which ones work out of the box on 5.05. It’s up to you if you want to be the guinea pig who figures that out.

3. Then again, how exciting is 4.55?

It’s still a good time to jump to a new firmware though. There’s not that many homebrews on the PS4 yet, so some might feel that they’re not losing much by getting it to 5.05, if only to re-live the thrills of being the pioneers of a new exploited firmware.

Conclusion

My personal take* is that if you’re on 4.05/4.55, it’s probably better to stay there for a couple weeks until the dust settles on 5.05.

There’s no doubt that 5.05 will become the golden firmware of PS4 hacks very soon, so how soon you upgrade to it depends on you, but remember there’s no going back. How much do you like your 4.05/4.55 hacked PS4? Would you miss what it has to offer if none of the homebrews you have on it work “out of the box” for 5.05? When you jump to 5.05, are you willing to wait a few weeks for these homebrews to come to 5.05? Conversely, how excited are you about what the future holds for 5.05? I feel your choice lies in the answers to these questions.

* I’m lucky enough to have both 4.05 and 5.05 at the moment, so I don’t have this conundrum. But ultimately I assume the 4.05 will get updated to whatever makes sense by the time I do the update.