Emulating the various PlayStation consoles has been commonplace for years, and developers constantly try to do so on various platforms. On Monday, the developers of PS3 emulator RPCS3 released a teaser on YouTube showing how their emulator runs on arm64 hardware, specifically on a Raspberry Pi 5. In an announcement post, they also showcased the emulator running on Apple M1 chips. All told, the emulator can now run on arm64 chips across Windows, Mac and Linux.
If you aren’t familiar with RPCS3, it’s the emulator Atlus tried to take down around Persona 5’s release in 2017. In Atlus’ defense, the developers name-dropped Persona on its Patreon page. Patreon took the RPCS3 developers’ side but asked them to remove all references to Persona titles.
It’s surprising that a PS3 emulator even runs on a Raspberry Pi 5, which isn’t a gaming powerhouse. Through some wizardry, the RPCS3 team was able to push the hardware to its limit. The framerate is locked to a maximum of 30FPS, and the graphics look like they come straight out of a PlayStation Portable screen, which is a 480p display from 20 years ago. The developers weren’t able to render those games at the PS3’s native 720p resolution. Naturally, the more powerful Apple Silicon chips will render games at a higher resolution.
Think of it this way, though. If you traveled back in time to tell people that a PSP could run PS3 games, nobody would’ve believed you. But the proof is now right here, and the teaser showed how the games didn’t experience severe frame drops. While impressive, RPCS3 isn’t the first emulator running natively on arm64 hardware, as that honor goes to Dolphin, the famous Wii and GameCube emulator.
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