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Emulation (Games) PlayStation (Games) Games

PS3 Emulator Will Now Boot Every Game Ever Released On the Console (kotaku.com) 39

Posted by BeauHD from the impressive-feats dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Kotaku, written by Luke Plunkett: RPCS3, an emulator I've been writing about since 2016, but which first began in 2011, has come along way since it made its first tentative steps towards making PS3 games playable on a PC. From those humble beginnings, the team behind it have just announced a huge milestone: everything ever released on the PS3 will now boot up. Earlier today the RPCS3 team tweeted: "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!"

There have been over 6,000 games and programs tracked over the emulator's lifespan, so to get every single one of them to some degree of booting up is an incredible achievement. It's important to note, though, that of the emulator's five tiers of playability, only one -- "Playable" -- is worth your time. The others are saddled with huge numbers of glitches, performance issues, or simply the fact they refuse to load past the title screens. [...] As of today, 63.53% of PS3 games are "playable" on the emulator, which means 36.47% are not; still a hugely impressive number, but just something to bear in mind!
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PS3 Emulator Will Now Boot Every Game Ever Released On the Console More

PS3 Emulator Will Now Boot Every Game Ever Released On the Console

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  • The "legal" use for one of those is to allow you to write new software that runs in the system.
    Of course, you need to be a complete wackjob masochist to think on doing that for the PS3, but those people do exist.

    • How about that ill fated version of Linux?

      • Re:But will it boot any homebrew? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday October 22, 2021 @08:35AM (#61917103) Homepage Journal

        There were only a couple of benefits to running PS3 Linux, and one of them was that it ran on cheap but fast hardware. But it's no longer cheap (by comparison to competitive hardware, even a used PS3 is not a bargain) and conversely it's no longer fast (by comparison to cheaper hardware.) The other benefit was that it made it easy to rip Blu-Ray, but AFAIK that's a solved problem on Linux today, and anyway it wouldn't help to run that on an emulator either.

    • Emulators are to play legal backups, not legal home brew. If you want to play your legality home brew on a PS3 hardware and bypass the protections that prevent it, there are lots of ways. (I remember I had some USB dongle and also remember a hacked firmware too). Probably a million ways to unlock your PS3 by now.

      • Re: But will it boot any homebrew? (Score:5, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday October 22, 2021 @08:36AM (#61917109) Homepage Journal

        I remember when the hack was first discovered using USB dongles. There was a particular Atmel evaluation board that could be used to do it, which cost about 30 bucks but which went out of stock everywhere and was on eBay for hundreds.

        The hack itself is quite interesting. The initial way in was by running some code that rapidly allocated and deallocated RAM under Linux, and then physically glitching the memory bus. Eventually one of the deallocated accidentally added some of the hypervisor's RAM to the pool of free memory, and the app was able to inject code into the hypervisor and eventually dump it.

        From there a flaw in the USB stack was found that allowed arbitrary code executing inside the hypervisor, breaking the console wide open for homebrew and piracy. Later the secret keys Sony used to sign binaries were discovered by looking at the dumped public keys and finding flaws in the cryptography. With those keys any binary could be signed to run on an unmodified PS3 with any firmware version.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by pol122 ( 8911225 )
          is there any way that you can try it out at the very least? people have been working too hard for this one and i can say that this is a win for all of us since AC Valhalla worked smoothly on the same platforms. have you even seen the fishing spots in the game? the detail was so good. https://www.gamersdecide.com/a... [gamersdecide.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Emulators are to play legal backups, not legal home brew. If you want to play your legality home brew on a PS3 hardware and bypass the protections that prevent it, there are lots of ways. (I remember I had some USB dongle and also remember a hacked firmware too). Probably a million ways to unlock your PS3 by now.

        Yes, there are custom firmware options for PS3 now because we have the root keys.

        However, PS3 emulation is necessary. PS3 hardware is over 15 years old and dying. Sony has not made any backwards com

    • When I did a few short NESdev toy projects I tested against two popular emulators (at the time) plus real hardware. It was likely that clone hardware or an obscure emulator wouldn't run (my flash cart didn't work on the NES clone I had). Since it was just a hobby project I didn't want to invest too much into broad compatibility. But I didn't hold the emulator authors accountable for my code, I just work around problems myself to satisfy the constraints of the emulator.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z80a ( 971949 )

        I noticed with the project i'm programming for the MSX that some emulators are "perfect in regards of the commercial software". Basically they do everything required to run the software written for the system, but if you go out of the scope, the emulator diverge from the real hardware.
        Bluemsx in particular allows you to do things the real hardware and OpenMSX throw a fit, such as changing the sprite table outside of the vblank and trying to load data from the disk drive with the motor off.

        • The command unit of the V9958, really a type of graphics accelerator, is not so accurately emulated in a lot of the MSX2+ emulators and few commercial titles exercise it (and of course almost all of the ones that do are in Japanese). There's definitely some really good choices for for emulators out there when doing software development, and some choices where you'll not have much success except for gamers looking to run an off-the-shelf ROM.

          Another platform where hardware versus emulation is tough is N64. T

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Z80a ( 971949 )

            N64 emulation did improved a lot mostly due one guy getting the MAME N64 emulation core and improving it into a graphical plugin that actually emulate the system at a low level etc..
            You can get it either with angrylion plugins or the parallel core on retroarch

  • Linux (Score:3)

    by guacamole ( 24270 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @09:39PM (#61916225)

    And Linux still not allowed to boot on PS3. Thanks, Obama.

    • What pisses me off even more than sony locking down linux is the horde of gamers out there that hate the hacker types and think they richly deserved to get screwed over.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ormy ( 1430821 )
      I was surprised how little market share Sony lost due to that debacle. It was certainly the last time I ever bought anything from Sony.

      • It shouldn't be surprising, because Sony claimed they were terminating PS3 Linux for security reasons, which has ramifications for cheat prevention (by making it harder to modify software on the console.) So for the average gamer, who gave zero shits about running Linux on their PS3, it looked like a positive change.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          It shouldn't be surprising, because Sony claimed they were terminating PS3 Linux for security reasons, which has ramifications for cheat prevention (by making it harder to modify software on the console.) So for the average gamer, who gave zero shits about running Linux on their PS3, it looked like a positive change.

          Except no hacks were ever done to break out of the hypervisor. There were vulnerabilities, but those could be fixed. Linux wasn't a practical way of breaking out of the hypervisor other than to

      • I was surprised how little market share Sony lost due to that debacle.

        You're surprised a gaming console is used by gamers and not people who care deeply about something other than gaming? Honestly I called it on day one that it wouldn't affect their market share in the slightest. It's a gaming device first and foremost. Few people bought this to run Linux and I say this knowing full well I presided over a cluster of these at our university... a great cluster it was but ultimately tiny compared to the gaming market.

  • Deep dive into PS3 architecture (Score:4, Informative)

    by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @11:01PM (#61916367)

    Copetti has an amazing writeup [copetti.org] on the PS3 architecture.

    Emulating the PPE and 7 SPEs is not easy.

  • This is a good milestone, but all it means is that they'll boot to a black screen and display a framerate counter. It doesn't even mean it'll boot to a title screen. That's the next milestone.

    Still, it's a big deal given how shitty the PS3's architecture is.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      It's not like all games just get to the menu. 63.53% are playable, 30.53% get ingame, 5.75% get to the intro, and 0.19% are loadable (boot but don't display anything). Having nearly two thirds of all games playable is pretty impressive considering the platform.

  • I'm amazed by what the at-home tinkerer community can achieve.
    • Yeah it's an amazing achievement. The devs writing this must have an impressive knowledge of the PS3's architecture and low-level stuff. Anyway, IIRC they setup a Patreon and it made them enough money to let several of the devs to work on the emulator full-time. Of course this doesn't detract anything from their impressive achievement but it's not something made by a few people in their spare time.

  • First and only game I'd want to play on the PC from the PS3: Red dead redemption.

    Not in the list.

    So the list lacks a whole bunch of games I reckon if that isn't in there...

  • Whilst this is an awesome achievement, I'm waiting for the day these things run on a low power device! Plus the small issue that PS3 just doesn't have any highly addictive games that aren't available in better looking newer iterations.
  • you guys need to know that the same game still works for it right? that means you can still go for the best builds in AC Valhalla right here https://www.gamersdecide.com/a... [gamersdecide.com]
  • Making PS3 playable on a PC is exciting. RPCS3 emulator has come a long way now. They are claiming that every game of PS3 can now be played on PC and it is bootable. That’s great news for PC gaming lovers.
    • Yeah, that is a great achievement as from 6000 games and programs, getting all those on emulators is quite a hectic job and they have done it. Let’s see if there are any glitches or bugs in the games that happen or not.
  • If they can make 63.53% of PS3 games playable using emulators, that’s enough for PC gaming lovers. Although some errors may occur to ruin the gaming experience, still I am happy that it is possible. The rest will be fixed soon.
  • The article clearly states that among five tiers of emulators, only one is playable. That means the games must have errors, glitches, issues with the performance, etc. watch out for all these downsides as well.
    • Well, you are right, but even if you can play some games on an emulator, it is worth it. at least people are getting something to play.
  • Lol. I searched on Google and it reveals that it works fine on RPCS3. But what is the point of using an emulator if you will need a huge gaming PC to do it? People can still enjoy gaming on PS3 instead? If they have to go after a monster PC gaming setup, they can buy PS4 in comparison.
    • Yes, your point is valid. But what really matters is that people are fond of PC gaming. And if they can enjoy PS3 games on PC, why they will go for another PS4 setup?
  • What I am wondering that how much market share will Sony lose through all this? I will definitely not buy anything of Sony from now on. LOL. How many people will do that too?
    • Yes, you are right. I was thinking of the same pattern too. But I really don’t think it will affect Sony as much as we are expecting. After all, they are pioneers.

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