Sony could be working on a way to bring PS3 emulation to PS5, it is claimed. This news comes just days after the company announced its revamped PlayStation Plus service, which will soon offer subscribers access to hundreds of legacy PlayStation titles.
However, while PS1, PS2, PS4, and PSP titles can be downloaded and played on PS5, the PS3’s library of games will only be accessible via streaming. PlayStation Now users will be all too familiar with this limitation, and it’s widely been cited as one of the main reasons why the service never reached it’s full potential. It was hoped that Sony would have found a way to enable PS3 emulation on PS5, but that wasn’t the case.
That said, there is still hope. According to Venturebeat’s Jeff Grubb in his latest video, “it sounds like Sony might be working on emulation for PS3 on PS5.”
PS3 emulation has always been a tough nut to crack. Although game preservation and modding communities have made breakthroughs – RPCS3 often pointed to as an example – it’s widely accepted that the PS3’s cell processor and fiddly architecture are roadblocks too obstructive for Sony to allocate the appropriate resources. You also need to consider Sony’s expensive acquisition of Gaikai back in 2012, and the fact the company’s video game streaming tech hasn’t been adopted to its fullest potential.
Still, there’s a clearly a demand for being able to download and play PS3 titles on PS5. While the technology has gradually improved over the years (with wider accessibility) there are still a huge number of gamers who don’t have internet speeds fast enough to stream games at an acceptable quality.
The new PlayStation Plus – codenamed Project Spartacus – will launch in June 2022. On the base level, PS Plus will remain as it is in the Essential plan, with monthly free games, cloud storage for saves and online multiplayer access – it will also retain the same price point. On top of that, you have PS Plus Extra which adds a catalogue of up to 400 PS4 and PS5 games, including some games from PlayStation Studios. Finally, PS Plus Premium will add access to PS3 games via cloud streaming, and a selection of PS1, PS2 and PSP games for both streaming and download.
For the Extra and Premium tiers, Sony will be including more of their first party games, and at launch, they plan to include games like Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11, and Returnal. This will not include Sony’s first party games on day one, it’s been confirmed in an interview, so it seems that Sony are not matching Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass in that regard.
Curious to know more about how the new PS Plus compares to Xbox Game Pass? We have you sorted in this handy breakdown.
ron_mcphatty
I always assumed that emulation has always been about cpu power. PS Now can’t be a room full of remote play PS3s, it must already be Sony’s own emulator and they’re just waiting for the right time to put it on a console, presumably whenever it’ll become profitable and easy to maintain. Disc-based emulation would be nice, I’d be alright paying a small activation fee per game to play a few old favourites…. As long as they work well!
MrYd
It may have changed since PS Now originally launched, but it was at least originally a bunch of PS3s running the games.
Well, actual PS3s weren’t suitable, so they bundled 8 of them into a single server rack. Uses less power, and they could make some changes to make streaming possible. Take out the hardware that output the screen to the HDMI connection, and pump the data straight into the video encoder ready to stream, along with various other changes. At least, that’s what people were assuming they were doing. Sony weren’t giving all the details at the time. It seems like there were definitely racks with 8 PS3s in, with some hardware modifications, and those were the most obvious things to do.
Full PS3 emulation on the PS5 seems unlikely, whatever the rumours. While other people have managed it, it’s not perfect, or even close. Definitely not anything Sony would see as acceptable. So huge amounts of effort and a limited selection of compatible games at best. With the number of games increasing with money and effort spent on it. And they’ve already got a solution they spent lots of money on which will be a suitable option for more and more people as internet speeds increase with time.
KippDynamite
I’ve read about people using PS3 emulators on PC. Whatever complicated guffins is going on inside a PS3, it seems modern consoles could easily manage to run such an emulator.
Matthijs
I just need it for motorstorm :-)