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PS3 emulator RPCS3 now supports most games. Playable to the end.

MathUser

MathUser

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The RPCS3 emulator has reached a significant milestone, with nearly the entire PlayStation 3 library now functional. According to the latest developer update, only 62 titles remain in the "Intro" stage, reduced from 101. Of these, 46 are PlayStation Move games. Once resolved, the project will be close to full compatibility.

Currently, 73.06 percent of PlayStation 3 titles are classified as "Playable," meaning they can be completed without major technical issues. An additional 25.12 percent are considered "In-Game," allowing gameplay but not full completion.

Launched in 2011, RPCS3 is an open-source, multi-platform emulator developed to accurately replicate PlayStation 3 hardware through reverse engineering. It supports Windows, Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD, and aims to preserve the console's library on PC.

Many PlayStation 3 exclusives remain unavailable outside the original hardware, though some titles are being remade or re-released. Native emulation on modern Sony hardware has not yet been implemented.
 
I'm patiently awaiting for native Blu-ray reading support, I bought one of the last LG 4K-capable blu-ray drives for my desktop in hopes that they get there. They recently allowed the reading of encrypted discs, so I think reading blu-ray games natively to emulate is only a matter of time. Its a really awesome feature in PCSX2 for reading PS2 discs (with RetroAchievement support as well).
 
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Nvzman said:
I'm patiently awaiting for native Blu-ray reading support, I bought one of the last LG 4K-capable blu-ray drives for my desktop in hopes that they get there. They recently allowed the reading of encrypted discs, so I think reading blu-ray games natively to emulate is only a matter of time. Its a really awesome feature in PCSX2 for reading PS2 discs (with RetroAchievement support as well).
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I don't think this will be a thing as Blu-ray reading speeds are slow as fuck and that is also the reason games have to be installed on HDD even on PS3.
 
rodrigolfp said:
I don't think this will be a thing as Blu-ray reading speeds are slow as fuck and that is also the reason games have to be installed on HDD even on PS3.
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While this is a fair point, this only applies to select games. They very well could just implement it to install required data to one of the save directory locations (theres at least like 3-4 between save files and actual installation locations), given it is emulating the PS3's file structure.

Looking through the GitHub, someone is already working on it, and it seems like there's already a commit, but I'm too shitty at understanding GitHub to know if this is already merged with the main release of RPCS3, or if this requires building from this commit.
 
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Nvzman said:
While this is a fair point, this only applies to select games. They very well could just implement it to install required data to one of the save directory locations (theres at least like 3-4 between save files and actual installation locations), given it is emulating the PS3's file structure.

Looking through the GitHub, someone is already working on it, and it seems like there's already a commit, but I'm too shitty at understanding GitHub to know if this is already merged with the main release of RPCS3, or if this requires building from this commit.
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Interesting but if this happen loading times will be a much worse "pain".
 
rodrigolfp said:
Interesting but if this happen loading times will be a much worse "pain".
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Personally, I'm fine with that. I've had two PS3s die on me (and I've never had a single other console ever fail on me), so I'd prefer to just keep playing my physical discs without burning out a third PS3. I know I can rip the discs, but I have a lot of PS3 games, it would be a time consuming (and space-consuming) process.
 
I updated mine a few weeks ago and since then everything is unplayable. 10-15fps when stuff was running at a buttery smooth 60fps. Deleted, deep cleaned my pc and registry, reinstalled, rechecked every setting a dozen times over and its still a mess.

Anyone ever experienced that?
 
MrJangles said:
I updated mine a few weeks ago and since then everything is unplayable. 10-15fps when stuff was running at a buttery smooth 60fps. Deleted, deep cleaned my pc and registry, reinstalled, rechecked every setting a dozen times over and its still a mess.

Anyone ever experienced that?
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Seems fine to me on my i5 12400 / RTX 5060ti
 
jshackles said:

According to their compatibility list, Motorstorm and Motorstorm: Pacific Rift are both in the "Playable" category (meaning they can be finished without too many issues). Motorstorm: Apocalypse is currently listed as "Ingame" meaning it can be played but has some bug that prevents progress somewhere.
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But just try it for yourself.
Many games still shows only as "playable" in the database but received huge performance updates.
 
Good nuse
time to play some of Dem tasty titles
Jack Nicholson Yes GIF
 
Can't recommend Asura's Wrath enough. 4K, 60fps, super short load times and still looks really nice.

Played it a few years ago and had 0 issues, and can imagine it's only better nowadays.
 
RPCS3 is ridiculously good and it's amazing that some talented but random folks managed to reverse engineer such complex hardware… better than Sony is seemingly able.

Motorstorm and other racing games are generally just great on it. Plenty of great titles still on the system and using emulation makes things a lot better due to higher rendering and 60 fps possibilities.
 
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I tried GOW: Ascension recently. I played till the tower of the Oracle and till that point it played fantastically with very few issues.
 
kpopSuperstar said:
When people say "little issues", what issues are we talking about?
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That's going to vary from game to game. Some "little issues" I've personally experienced using the emulator are things like shadows not working correctly (jagged edges instead of smooth lines), or things like colors being slightly off (something green looks purple-ish). Typically stuff like this that's incorrectly emulated is usually incorrectly emulated consistently - for example rarely have I seen colors swap from green to purple or cycle rapidly.
 
rodrigolfp said:
Interesting but if this happen loading times will be a much worse "pain".
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Actually, sorry to double reply, but I tested the commit in GitHub (as it was apparently merged into the master build)... and sure enough it works! If you set up the key directory and decryption key correctly, you can natively read Blu-ray PS3 discs right off the drive. I was able to boot into my Uncharted PS3 disc which is awesome. I have no idea why this hasn't really been discussed or brought up elsewhere, imo this is a pretty crazy feature, you can just pop discs in and play them without having to dump them, and the loading times didn't seem egregiously slow or anything.
 
Nvzman said:
Actually, sorry to double reply, but I tested the commit in GitHub (as it was apparently merged into the master build)... and sure enough it works! If you set up the key directory and decryption key correctly, you can natively read Blu-ray PS3 discs right off the drive. I was able to boot into my Uncharted PS3 disc which is awesome. I have no idea why this hasn't really been discussed or brought up elsewhere, imo this is a pretty crazy feature, you can just pop discs in and play them without having to dump them, and the loading times didn't seem egregiously slow or anything.
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That's awesome! But probably not brought up much because a) reading the discs requires a specific drive from a small subset of available models and b) concerns about long term disc viability (disc rot, in addition to scratching) means it's best to dump them locally anyway if you care about being able to play these games long-term.
 
It might be time to go revisit the Skate series.

Games were so good on the ps3, every game was targeted to men back then.
 
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I am still kind of floored by this emulator outperforming most Gen 6 efforts (notably PS2 and XBox emulators, and even GC at times) and it got there relatively fast too.
Yes the library is smaller than PS2 (but considerably larger than GC/XBox), but it's the general compatibility and performance that completely mops the floor.

I can literally run a number of high-profile PS3 games on a handheld at 144 fps - using only 15-18W TDP, at 2-4x the resolution of original games.
When dealing with Gen 6 emulation - a lot of titles will not hit their native framerate (let alone 3-4x native) without going to 30W, and there are still those that simply can't run at full clip at all.

Hell - even more amusing - I can emulate PS3 versions of Everybody's Golf at higher resolution and better framerate than the native PC release that just came out - and frankly it's hard to argue the new game even looks any better than the old ones did. 🤷‍♂️
 
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Well, well, emulation gives us what PlayStation doesn't, for reasons… I don't know. Too busy with their unsuccessful live service games, I guess… maybe.

Bravo to the team behind RPCS3, you are true heroes!
 
It's definitely in a good place, and I'd say the coolest improvement in the last year has been Motorstorm games being largely playable at 4k 60fps, with only parts Apocalypse not being quite there yet unless you trade some graphical glitches for better performance.

Even though the Ratchet and Clank PS3 era games are still marked in-game, they pretty much fixed all the major graphical issues, and if you got the hardware brunt you can do 4k 60fps now. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, and Wipeout HD also work great now vs a year ago.

Main thing I'm waiting on getting better performance is Infamous 1-2 + Festival of Blood, Ridge Racer 7 & Gran Turismo 5+6. God of War 3 is almost there at 1440p for me, but not 4k.
 
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