The guys over at DCEmu have posted a great question on the forum :

If Sony release the emulator (PSone) and it runs good enough and cheap enough will you upgrade to a new homebrew killing firmware ?

The general view point is that many people will not upgrade their PSP to be able to use the PSone emulator, as it will mean the end to homebrew and the other benefits (I assume ISO loading) of running a PSP with firmware 1.5.

The most common response seems to be that if the ModChip or DevHook allows access to the PSone emulator without sacrificing the 1.5 firmware, then people will make use of the emulator, but the emualtor alone is not enough to convince people to sacrifice what they already have. There is of course the added possibility of a homebrew PSone emualtor eventually becoming available, which would make Sony’s efforts redundant (assuming a PSone emualtor not produced by Sony could survive the onslaught of legal action).

From a personal point of view – I downgraded my PSP to firmware 1.5 and at the moment its fun to play around with. I contemplating dumping some of my games to ISO to see how the DevHook software works, but then again I might not bother.

Will I stick with 1.5 forever? I’m not sure, at the moment there is a real novelty factor at play, similar to when homebrew first hit firmware 2.6 with the eLoader, but that wore off after a while. This time, with the ease of loading homebrew being a big factor, I may stick with it for a while.

Will I upgrade to take advantage of the PSone emulator? No, probably not – I don’t see the point in playing games that I could play on either my PSone or PS2 on the PSP, especially when I have to pay for them again. If there was a way to play games I already own without having to pay for them again, I’d think long and hard about it, but as this is highly unlikely to happen, its a moot point.

Its a shame that Sony are putting alot of work into the emulator – in some ways its a step back for the PSP to have the company concentrating on its past games rather than generating new ones.

I guess there will come a point in the future where I will have to decide whether to upgrade the PSP firmware or not, and its likely to be around the time GT4 Mobile comes out, and not the release of a PSone emulator.