Dark_AleX has updated his blog in regards to all the questions he is receiving about 4.00 M33 custom firmware. Rather than rephrase it, here’s what Dark_AleX has to say about 4.00 M33:

Just a little update. Watching how many people were asking for 4.00m33, it’s interesting to make somethings clear.

Due to the lack of updates from sony (features), this new cfw will implement new changes that will make easier to work on the future ones, within some internal tools.

You’d have probably noticed some features of this new cfw that were told on french forums, but, to tell the truth, neither the savestates or the recovery on XMB or etc would at 100% probability be implemented at once (maybe later on m33-2, … etc)

Even though, recovery will be translated to spanish and you will be able to translate it to any other language without hex editing.

To sum up, main changes will come for compatibility and internal issues (with some functions to make life easier to the shells creators, launchment of an utility to compress prx’s and pbp’s, etc.)

It will be likely be done by the end of this week.

So there you have it, its likely it will be out by the end of the week.

Source: Alex’s Blog

Update: 4.01 M33 has been released.

Good news for those that are awaiting for news on 4.00 M33. Mathieulh has commented on a couple of great new features that are going to be introduced in this up and coming M33 custom firmware.

Custom Firmware 4.00 M33 will feature an XMB recovery mode, which will allow access to the recovery menu from within the PSP main menu / XMB. A feature which was first introduced in 3.95 GEN, now will be a part of M33 firmware. The second new and more exciting feature to be added is native savestate support. Users can save and load their progress at any given time while playing a UMD game. Much like what many common PSP emulators have. However it has not been decided yet if it will be part of the released 4.00 M33 firmware or released as an add-on / Plug-in.

Still no release date yet on 4.00 M33 but its looking good. Savestate support will be very handy indeed.

• Update: 4.01 M33 has been released.

Judging from the comments made on PSPGen (The GEN/Miriam Custom Firmware homepage) Version 4.00 GEN might not see the light of day as a public release. Although a beta version of 4.00 Gen has been completed by Miriam, Team GEN might keep this release internal as they are aware that Dark_AleX and team M33 and busy on thier own custom firmware - 4.00 M33 due to be released soon.

Miriam / Team GEN - Translated from French:

“The concept of Custom firmware GEN was to show that there is an alternative to Dark_Alex but never try to take his place. If he returns to the runway, the need for the line 4.00 GEN does not feel right.”

So either way users wanting to run homebrew with the features of Firmware 4.00 will have their custom firmware soon be it 4.00 M33 or 4.00 GEN. Its nice to see they are not directly competing, racing to see who will get 4.00 custom firmware out first.

So what do you think? 4.00 Gen should be unreleased? Let the Team M33 release their work first?

Source: PSPGen (French)

Team M33 have returned and are busy working on PSP Custom Firmware 4.00 M33. The master himself Dark_AleX is working on this now. Its also reported that there will be a brand new recovery menu in 4.00 M33, no other new features to be added at this stage other than what was included in the official Firmware 4.00 update. The release date? No date set yet, however 4.00 M33 custom firmware will be released soon…

Source : mathieuLH

Update: 4.01 M33 has been released.