RPCS3 Makes 75% of PS3 Games Playable on PC

Q: Is Sony's lack of PS3 support on PS5 a technical hurdle or a strategic choice to resell classic games as remasters?

It is both, but the bigger barrier is technical. The PS3’s Cell processor is unusually hard to emulate well. Even RPCS3, after years of work, has only made about 75% of the library fully playable on modern PCs, and many demanding games still suffer from glitches or heavy CPU requirements. Tests of RPCS3 on a PS5 running Linux suggest the PS5’s CPU is the main bottleneck: some early or lighter PS3 games run well, but later titles that rely heavily on the Cell’s SPUs, such as Metal Gear Solid 4 or Killzone 2, still struggle. That makes a full, polished, official PS3 emulator for PS5 expensive and difficult to deliver at Sony’s quality standard. But Sony’s business strategy also matters. Rather than invest heavily in universal PS3 backward compatibility, Sony has favored selective access through PlayStation Plus cloud streaming and through remasters or remakes that can be sold again on PS5, PC, and other platforms. That approach avoids the licensing, testing, and support burden of making the entire PS3 catalog work, while creating a clearer commercial return. RPCS3’s progress weakens any claim that PS3 preservation is impossible, but it does not prove Sony could easily add native PS3 support to PS5. The evidence points to a real engineering problem that Sony has chosen not to solve broadly, in part because curated re-releases and streaming are more practical and more profitable.

3 articles · Updated · GamingOnLinux · Jul 16

75.33% of the PlayStation 3 library is now classified as playable in RPCS3, marking a new milestone for the open-source emulator on PC.
New features, fixes and optimizations drove the gain, according to the project, which said it is moving closer to preserving the full PS3 catalog.
Another 22.93% of PS3 games can reach in-game but are not yet finishable, while only 1.69% fail to get past the intro.
The progress highlights emulation's growing role in game preservation as Sony moves further away from physical discs, and RPCS3 also offers a native Linux version.