Currently, PlayStation 3 titles can only be played on the PlayStation 5 via the cloud, unless you install Linux on the console. Therefore, this would be a significant innovation.

Since the release of PlayStation Classics on the PS5, gamers have demanded a proper PS3 emulator instead of the cloud versions currently available. Last year, we heard that Implicit Conversions, the developer of the PlayStation Classics ports, was working on native PS3 emulation. However, nothing has come of it so far. They have a good reason for the delay: only the PlayStation 6, equipped with Zen 6 CPU architecture, has enough power to handle Cell architecture emulation at full speed.

Over the weekend, Digital Foundry shared a PS3 emulation test on the PlayStation 5. Similar to their path tracing test, this was made possible by a new Linux loader. Using RPCS3, currently the best available PlayStation 3 emulator, the test revealed a significant bottleneck that likely prevents the native emulation of PlayStation 3 games: the CPU bottleneck. Games that did not tax the Cell processor’s complex SPU architecture, such as Ridge Racer 7, Resistance: Fall of Man, and Heavenly Sword, run excellently on the PlayStation 5 with higher resolution and better performance. However, games that use the SPUs intensively for open-world simulation and morphological anti-aliasing, such as Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and God of War: Ascension, suffer from severe performance issues.

Increasing the resolution does not affect performance, suggesting that the PlayStation 5’s CPU is the source of the performance issues. Other tested games, such as Killzone 2 and Killzone 3 and the MotorStorm trilogy, also suggest that only the PlayStation 6, equipped with a Zen 6 processor, will have sufficient performance to properly emulate the PlayStation 3. Disabling SPU-based features, such as morphological anti-aliasing, significantly improves emulation quality. However, in the case of Killzone 2, increasing the resolution increases the CPU load since the post-processing was handled by the SPUs.

While an official PlayStation 3 emulator would benefit from full system documentation, which the RPCS3 team lacks, it’s understandable that addressing the PlayStation 5’s CPU emulation shortcomings might not be worth it for Sony, given the imminent release of the PlayStation 6.

Source: WCCFTech