Sony’s PlayStation 3 offers an incredible library of first-party and third-party games. Despite the appeal of many PlayStation 3 games, Sony does not provide native backwards compatibility for the console. Although Sony PS Plus Premium allows PS3 game streaming for its console, it may be hit or miss for many users due to network and location variables.

However, the team behind PlayStation RPCS3 emulator has been working hard for many years to ensure that the PlayStation 3 library can be enjoyed even without official backwards compatibility from Sony.

The team recently took another big step by announcing that every PlayStation 3 game is now bootable in RPCS3.

We are excited to announce that as of today, the RPCS3 Loadable compatibility category has reached 0 GAMES!

This means no more PS3 games left that boot to a black screen on the emulator – every PS3 game at least boots and shows an image output.

Happy Holidays! pic.twitter.com/3ZAWFzbyGP

— RPCS3 (@rpcs3) December 25, 2022

As seen in the official tweet above, no PS3 games boot to a black screen on RPCS3. However, this does not mean that all PS3 games are fully playable on the emulator. These games belong to the “playable” category, and nearly 70% of the PS3 library can be fully enjoyed on RPCS3.

Sony avoided official backwards compatibility for the PlayStation 3 primarily due to the complexity of the PS3’s cellular architecture. The complex processor also proved to be a huge obstacle for the RPCS3 team, and the emulator is currently a work in progress, unlike PCSX2 and other emulators.

The RPCS3 website recommends a 6-core Intel Skylake or AMD Zen 2 CPU, but even better hardware is needed for optimal results because RPCS3 is extremely demanding. In addition, processors with AVX-512 instruction sets are also convenient for the emulator, further improving performance.

At the moment, games like Asura’s Wrath, Demon’s Souls, Motorstorm Pacific Rift and many more can be enjoyed with the emulator with significantly better settings and frame rates than the PS3 console. With each new update, the team has constantly improved the emulator and fans can expect more titles to join the playable tier.

RPCS3 has proven to be the saving grace for PlayStation 3 titles like MotorStorm Pacific Rift that are stuck on aging hardware. Sony hasn’t shown much interest in native PS3 backwards compatibility, and RPCS3 seems to be the only hope for fans of this generation.

Fortunately, the RPCS3 team is doing a great job and continuing to improve the emulator. Interested people can download the emulator from the official website RPCS3 website and try it.

Have you ever tried RPCS3? Are you interested in emulation? Let’s discuss it in the comments.

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