PlayStation 3 emulators

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Revision as of 22:52, 17 December 2017 by 73.59.52.44 (talk) (PSNow isn't emulation: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-sony-creates-custom-ps3-for-playstation-now)
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The original PlayStation logo at launch.
The PlayStation 3 slim console

The PlayStation 3 (known shorthand as PS3) is a console by Sony released in 2006. This console was considered hard to program for early in its lifecycle due to the newly-introduced Cell Broadband Engine architecture that no game developer outside of Sony had worked with prior to launch. Because of this, many multiplatform games ran worse or had worse graphics on the PS3, despite it being the more powerful system.

Emulators

Name Operating System(s) Latest Release Version Active Recommended
RPCS3 Windows, Linux 0.0.4 Alpha[N 1]
Nucleus Windows, Linux 0.1.0
Short Waves Windows 0.0.2
  1. The developers are currently treating version increments as milestones, not as stables.

Comparisons

RPCS3
It's making rapid progress compared to its early days where development was slow and seemed like it wasn't really going anywhere. Many games have become playable, or at least loadable, and it has recently switched the interface to Qt, using a design that's akin to Dolphin.
Nucleus
A one man project aiming for LLE, some AOT emulation, and portability.
Short Waves
Made by an unknown developer. It could run a few complex tests that RPCS3 couldn't at the time it released, but it hasn't been updated since.

Emulation issues

The complexity of the Cell processor architecture, plus the fact that it would take significantly more resources to get such games emulated (in comparison, see specifications in Dolphin and PCSX2 for their respective consoles), makes emulating and running games a challenge. Expect game-breaking issues of one kind or another in the vast majority of titles at this point in time.