Developer psxdev (aka bigboss) has released an update to make the PS4 SDK (originally made by hitodama) compatible with Firmware 5.05. He also updated liborbis, his series of libraries to help with the creation of homebrew games for the PS4.

In theory, this means you should now be able to create homebrew for firmware 5.05 with these tools and without requiring any leaked or copyrighted content. Yes, it was already possible to create Homebrew for 5.05, but not with open tools so far.(here’s a full explanation on the various PS4 SDKs and why I think this one is our best bet right now)

In practice, there might be a few more things to piece together for the generated binaries to actually load on a PS4 “as is”: I believe (I haven’t tried yet!) the SDK generates elf files, not packages that can be installed out of the box. Instead, the elfs need to be loaded from a “homebrew loader” app. That app would probably need to be distributed as a pkg file to the masses. Psxdev mentioned to me he will not be releasing the loader package, but he also pointed to his gist where he gives the source code. Maybe it just takes one person to compile this and make a pkg file out of it.

He also showed a screenshot of his MSX emulator, probably running on 5.05, with the following call to the scene:

Where are your homebrew apps? pic.twitter.com/nZ9uCYO0EP

— bigboss (@psxdev) June 24, 2018

It will probably take a few motivated devs to look through those tools and come up with a reasonable tutorial on how to make and run your homebrews with the SDK, but from what I can tell, everything is now out there.

Download PS4 SDK and liborbis for PS4 5.05

Sources can be found on psxdev’s github. Explanations on how to compile and run are in the respective READMEs. For anything else… please share your feedback and help each other 🙂

• ps4 sdk
• liborbis
• Details on the elf loader