At approximately midnight Eastern Standard Time, Sony released a new version of the firmware for both North America and Japan.

At the time of writing it is not available at the official Software Update site, but it is expected to be soon. It is available through the PSP's Wifi Network Update function, or as a direct download (in USB mode, place it in X:\PSP\GAME\UPDATE\ where X is your PSP drive letter).

Read on for more details.

What?? Japan too? What's going on?

This is going to require some explanation, so keep your pants on. Let me first start with the Japanese 2.0 update that was released in July. It had the following MD5 hash:

62f6d3d18038f463092e3d6653fae195

An MD5 hash is a way of identifying a file to ensure it is the file you think it is. If two files share the same MD5 hash, it is basically beyond reasonable doubt that they are in every way identical. Here's the MD5 hash for the Korean 2.0 update:

62f6d3d18038f463092e3d6653fae195

As you can see, they are identical. Japan and Korea received the exact same update, despite having different PSP models. But what about us North Americans, Uncle Aero? Damnit, hold on Jimmy, I'm getting to that.

This is the MD5 of our North American update tonight:

50c7032754835b588319c1a6c652cdc0

And yes, it is version 2.00, not 2.01 or anything like that. If you've already updated, don't scream in terror just yet. Recall that I said Japan received another update tonight, also through their Wifi Network Update. Japan's new update also reads as 2.00, but it is a larger file than before, and has a different MD5 than before:

50c7032754835b588319c1a6c652cdc0

If you have already installed the 2.00 update from July, it is not possible to install tonight's 2.00 update. However, keep in mind several things:

1. There is nothing wrong with the update from July. See, Japanese users can't upgrade to tonight's update either. If there was something wrong with it, Sony would have incremented the version number.
2. There will be future firmware upgrades (i.e. 2.1, etc.) that will install over this one.

I realise this is somewhat unsettling for those of us who already upgraded (hey, listen, I did too), but I quite honestly and firmly believe that there is nothing wrong with that update and that Everything Will Be Okay™.

If you'll allow my $0.02 for a moment, I believe Sony has acted incredibly irresponsibly throughout this whole ordeal, and I am very wary of anything they say anymore.

zmcnulty says: I will also add my 2 cents. I think Sony is trying to pull a fast one on us. They are releasing an updated file to Japanese users without making an announcement about it. In fact, they have left the version number to the same in hopes that people won't notice that it is, in fact, an updated version. Why would they want to do that? I can only think of one thing -- there were "problems" with the previous 2.00 firmware. Whether this means problems associated with the browser, or a security hole, we'll have to find out somehow. There's only one part that doesn't fit with this theory: users who downloaded the 2.00 update (earlier) can't upgrade to this new version. Is Sony just relying on the fact that a lot of people didn't bother upgrading when they first released 2.00? To avoid confusion when trying to differentiate between the two files, we here at PSP-Vault have officially dubbed this "new" 2.00 firmware version 2.00U. Now back to Aero.