PlayStation 5 PS3 Native Emulation Could Be Held Back by Important Technical Limitations

Due to the Cell processor that powered the system, PlayStation 3 emulation on the PlayStation 5 could be held back by important technical limitations

[TheNamelessOne]

All that processor ever really served was to make game development harder for most people. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

[Markdn]

Your right, well up. Till the point they realised how to program it and then it became a monster, they way it off loads tasks to spus and they way it manages this is astounding, I wish they had just upgraded it for ps4 gave it more ram to its disposal as it would truely have been a monster, instead we got an under powered AMD chip and some of the guys here we very disappointed indeed. For a cost point of view it made PS4 more affordable but from a development point of view, we already had the development tools and software

[yeahokwhatever]

all that processor did was wipe the floor with its competition. like, badly.

[TheNamelessOne]

I remember most 3rd party titles being the runt of the litter when it came to ports that generation.

[yeahokwhatever]

EA made a few bad ports in the opening months of the release. compare 1st party titles. go ahead. do it. oh you cant. not even the same league.

[TheNamelessOne]

If you insist, fanboy.

[yeahokwhatever]

I see you named nothing. interesting.

[RaiderNation]

Its Digital Foundry. Ignore.

[ZycoFox]

Ignore because they're good at tech/frame rate analysis? K..

[1nsomniac]

Ignore because they’re arguably widely recognised as one of, if not the best source in the industry… great logic. Well done.

[fsfsxii]

They offer surface level analysis, its like that Tv overlay that displays the framerate, they absolutely have 0 clue with anything development related, or anything behind the scenes, and more often than not, they’re a propaganda machine.

[1nsomniac]

The irony being they clearly do know and they continuously prove that they know.. Relentlessly. If these comments aren’t sarcasm then they’re a sure fire way to make yourself look a bit stupid.

[Aggesan]

I think they're among the best in the business when it comes to frame by frame analysis, but they often speak on topics where they're not more informed than any other interested and passionate amateur. Quite often it's painful watching their show when they state things like facts when they're in fact wrong, and knowing that most of their viewers will assume they're 100% correct about everything they say. I still enjoy them though, especially the retro stuff.

[RaidenBlack]

lol, one slightly -ve take from DF and bam! ~ " Ignore "

[Huey_My_D_Long]

For those who say DF doesn't know what they are doing...Gotta give us a hard example not a generalized statement.

[TheEroica]

Sony beggers raging at DF because Sony can't feed them enough remakes and old generation content to keep them happy. Yikes!

[VariantAEC]

DF... the same people convinced PS5 and Xbox Series consoles couldn't do raytracing? The same people who didn't consider PS4 Pro was running AC7 better than Xbox One X due to PS4 Pro's CPU rapid packed math feature while I was telling them to look into it? The same people that are still confused about the PS5's capabilities against XSX's despite all the information being handed to them on a silver platter by Mark Cerny which some smarter gamers with some programming experience have been telling them since the road to PS5 talk was done? Those people?

Yeah, I think I'll continue to pass on any superficial opinion-based observations they make about game developement, too.

[neomahi]

Here they are using NATIVE again like they know what it means, they don't.

[meganick]

I’d like to see someone explain why you’re getting downvotes. You’re correct. If software is running on native (original) hardware, then it’s not being emulated. If it is being emulated, then it’s not running on native hardware. “Native emulation” seems to be a bit of an oxymoron.

[VariantAEC]

DF doesn't know what "native support" means... it doesn't seem like you know either. Native support can mean emulation, but meaning the original hardware is not required, but it also means no downloads. "Native support" means that nothing additional is required to run the software as intended. You can certainly call a software emulation layer on PS3 for PS1 games native support because it ran software from the disc needing absolutely nothing else to work properly. The PS1 hardware was not on PS3, but the games were still natively supported.

Xbox backward compatibility support is not native, no games run from discs without downloading a repackaged app to run. That is not native support and we all agree DF is blatently lying by suggesting it is.

All consoles run repackaged legacy games this gen, which is exactly why the PS3 is still the gold standard for backward compatibility on consoles to this very day. You would simply pop in any PS1/2 disc and they'd just run without needing anything else from anywhere. Apparently, the newer PS3's (no Emotion Engine) still ran the majority of PS2 games.

[meganick]

@VariantAEC

First off, you’re using a different term than me. I was talking about the use of the term “native emulation.” But you’re using the term “native support.” Maybe that’s the same thing. I’m not sure.
So from what I gather, “native emulation” means emulation that doesn’t require a download. In computer terminology, I’ve always thought of “native” as implying original hardware, or at least original components.

[Eonjay]

Would really love to play some Infamous and Resistance.

[RedDevils]

Play it on RPCS3.

[InUrFoxHole]

I never understood the love for resistance... I found it the be mid at best. Infamous 2 was good. Would be great to play killzone again

[TheNamelessOne]

Outside of the third game, the series was definitely average.

[anast]

The concept was cool. I would day 1 a current gen version of the title.

[babadivad]

It's only a matter of time before Xbox has PS3 emulation before Playstation because of them dragging their feet.

[Bathyj]

Be nice if they did. Be nice to have a reason to get an Xbox again after all this time .

[RaidenBlack]

OP's sarcasm comes from Xbox's superior emulation department ... likely the only efficient department at Xbox

[Reaper22_]

Lol.. good one.

[Vits]

I mean... it's really not that far-fetched. Emulation on the Xbox consoles is miles ahead of the PlayStation consoles. The Switch gets close if you jailbreak it, but it lacks power and the cool part about emulation on Xbox is that you just need a $20 dev account to use those features.

And if anything, the Xbox just doesn't have a PS3, Wii U, and Switch emulator yet because it lacks native support for Vulkan/OpenGL 4.3. The moment someone makes a new wrapper or it gets that compatibility, it will be a matter of weeks for those consoles to be playable on it as well.

[babadivad]

rpcs3 already perfectly emulates tons of PS3 games on PC. The Xbox already emulates the PS2 far better than Sony. As for the PS3 emulator, the only thing needed is for someone to create a uwp version of RPCS3 and you'll be good to go. There's already a 360 uwp emulator. I suspect RPCS3 will be ported over before the year is out.

[mkis007]

Watch them just use what is already available and stick it in a ps5 update. Hopefully they would be smart enough to make sure it's secure.

[Reaper22_]

Backwards compatibilty is not one of sony's strong areas.

[BlackTar187]

Ps2 was full back and og ps3 was fully back comp before people complain about price. Xbox has less then 10% of their past games actually back comp before the latest xbox which i dont know enough to comment on.

[Reaper22_]

Ps2 was not full backwards compatible and neither was the ps3.
Xbox has almost 600 games that are BC. That's much better than sony provides.

[yeahokwhatever]

PS3 60GB and 20GB were full backwards compatible as they included entire PS2s inside of them.

[BlackTar187]

Ps2 was like 98% backwards comparable and had thr i/o built in to every ps2 . Ps3 og was full back comp.

Lmao 600 games in a library of thousands.

What a joke

[babadivad]

You could play your entire PS1 catalog on your PS2. You could play your entire PS1 and PS2 catalog on the launch version of the PS3. The reason Sony isn't doing it now is simply because they don't want to. There are emulators that run PS3 games just fine on PC. Sony could do this as well, that is, if they wanted to.

[TheNamelessOne]

Sony gave up on actual backwards compatibility. Microsoft excelled in it. It's as simple as that. Xbox makes it very easy to play older titles (even from other consoles). Sony sells backwards compatibility back to you, or offers them via expensive remasters/remakes.

[meganick]

@TheNamelessOne

How did Sony give up on backward compatibility when PS5 is fully backward compatible with PS4? Do you not think before you type?

[BlackTar187]

When people say things like nameless it’s hard for me to not think they are a bot or a paid shill.

[meganick]

Their only console that didn’t have backward compatibility was the PS4. I’m not counting the PS1 since there was nothing prior to be backward compatible with.

[DarXyde]

I really wish Sony didn't take such a complicated approach with the PS3 architecture.

A lot of great games trapped on that platform until they figure it out, and it's made more frustrating when they really don't want to add CELL processors to modern hardware.

They ditched the Emotion Engine which was very inconvenient when my OG PS3 died.

[Huey_My_D_Long]

Its weird that my lenovo legion go can emulate ps3 games on a emulator better than PS5 can. Seriously I was excited to play Sly but was disappointed with what little upscaling they had with black boxes on the sides

[badz149]

it's $300 more expensive though

[Huey_My_D_Long]

....OK
Despite it being more expensive, the internal specs don't compare with the ps5 so I fail to see what the price has to do with it.
The steam deck handles it better than the ps5

[badz149]

Yeah? Says who? These DF guys? Do they have any idea or insight on yhe situation at Sony regarding this PS3 emulation? They don't. It's all speculation and guess work at this point. There are hacked PS5 out there. Any luck running the PS3 emulator just yet?

[cytricks]

from what I remember, doesn't the ps5 have a tempest engine used for 3d audio that is very similar to SPUs? They could use a combination of techniques to get ps3 games running on ps5

[stefd75]

I hope they can get this working. I have a ton of PS3 games I would like to play again

[CrimsonWing69]

I was always under the impression for any of these to run natively they’d need the cell processor and even for PS2 true backwards compatibility they needed the emotion engine. It’s partially why the PS3 was absurdly priced at launch because you effectively had 2 consoles in one.

When j hear “native” that makes me think non-emulation. So, I’m a little confused by all this.

[meganick]

It’s simple, they’re using the term “native” incorrectly.

[VariantAEC]

"Native software support" just means software will run without anything extra.

It means Digital Foundry is straight-up lying when they claim Xbox One/Series natively support Xbox/360 games. If that were the case you could pop in any Xbox/360 game into Xbox One/Series and they'd run without an internet connection which is required to download the repackaged game app.

Sure Xbox has anywhere from 718 to 740 Xbox/360 games to play on new Xbox consoles - I'm just going to say XSX as that's the only one with a disc drive and MS doesn't make any XO consoles anymore anyway - while PS5 only runs 147 games with 76 being made for PS5 only. The thing is, none of that is native support. Xbox has the benefit of allowing older discs to start a free download of the most current version of legacy titles which is definitely a feather in Xbox's cap and a consumer friendly move. Somehow DF felt it was okay to lie and convince people that this is native support. Not sure how people let that slide.

DF is basically becoming the BBC/CNN/Fox News/Sky News of game analysis channels. Heavily biased to one side or the other and totally willing to disregard hard facts.