They might not run well, but every last PS3 game will at least boot on the RPCS3 emulator.
PlayStation 3 emulation has come a long way since the developers of emulator RPCS3 began their journey in 2011. Now, a decade later, the team has announced that every game ever released for the Sony console will now boot on PC.
Spotted by Kotaku, the PRCS3 team announced yesterday that there are now zero games that straight-up won't boot in the emulator. That's a major milestone cleared, though it doesn't mean your favourite PS3 classics are all completely playable quite yet.
We're delighted to announce that RPCS3 now has a total of ZERO games in the Nothing status!This means that all known games and applications at least boot on the emulator, with no on-going regressions that prevent games from booting.We look forward to emptying out Loadable too! pic.twitter.com/fE1iDpAvQoOctober 20, 2021
As per RPCS3's tweet, the emulator rates games based on how far it's able to run them. What today's announcement means is that there are zero games that flat-out won't initialise at all, though there are still around 6 games that only display a black screen. On the upside, just over 2,000 games (around 63.5%) are marked as "playable", which means they should be working as intended.
Sony has been historically very reluctant to bring its catalogue to PC, and huge swathes of the PS3's catalogue never made it over to desktop. But that's an approach Sony has slowly been turning around, with prestige PlayStation titles like Horizon: Zero Dawn and Death Stranding making their way to PC in recent years. This week, Sony that even announced that God of War will be making its way over next January.
That said, with the exception of maybe Uncharted, it's hard to imagine Sony reaching as far back as the PS3 for PC ports. Whether you're looking to revisit the original Demon's Souls or simply have an unexplainable need to see PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale running on your desktop, emulation's probably your best bet.
