James Delahunty
4 Oct 2005 23:17
Sony has released a firmware update for the PSP in Japan (a few days ago) and now in North America. However, there isn't really much of a system update in PSP 2.01 from Sony. In fact, the only thing that 2.01 firmware does is fixes a "security flaw". That security flaw is the same one that is used to run several small homebrew applications and loaders on PSP 2.00.
As most of you should be aware, the PSP 2.00 flaw that was discovered eventually led to the release of a downgrader that allowed PSP users to rollback firmware to PSP 1.50, allowing them to run homebrew code. Sony disapproves of running "unauthorized software" on PSPs and that is the only reason this PSP 2.01 update has come along.
So to put it simply, if you want to run homebrew on your PSP, do not update to 2.01. You can't run homebrew on anything newer than 1.50. However, if you have 2.00 firmware you can downgrade to 1.50. Read how to do that using this guide.
Sources:
PSPUpdates
PlayStation.com