The process for the mod sounds complicated from the descriptions, but when you look closer they are listing multiple ways to do the same mod and using lots of unnecessary jargon. The PS3 as a retro emulation machine is great for the systems that Retroarch does support, but I see the PS3 as a great way to have all your Sony formats on one system, with emulation of SNES etc as a bonus. PS3 Retroarch notably doesn't seem to support N64 or Dreamcast, and I tried Yabause for the Saturn but it's very slow.
You can install Retroarch for your emulation needs, although this seems more relevant to older game systems than the PC version. And PS1 seems perfect, and plays everything I've tried. Some have been perfectly playable with a little graphical corruption, but most are perfect. It's surprising when you consider that most models of the PS3 don't offer backwards compatibility for PS2 games - the emulation isn't perfect but so far only one game hasn't worked. There is also support for PSP games, although compatibility varies from game to game. Your PS3 converts the disks to ISOs automatically. The modded PS3 seems to be a brilliant way to get your PS1, PS2, and PS3 games collection all in one place, even if your PS3 isn't backward compatible. Also please be aware that this is, as always, for storing and playing your own games collection that you legally own.**
All mods are done at your own risk, and I'm not responsible if you mod your PS3. If you see any information here that is incorrect, please comment and I will correct it. This post has been updated to reflect that. However, currently my opinion is that the PS3 isnt a great emulation solution, but there are a number of good reasons to mod your PS3 anyway. I will continue to add to it as I discover new and exciting stuff about the PS3. **This post is a work in progress and I have added to it as I learned more about the PS3 modding scene. "Atlus wants to cut off a PS3 emulator because it runs Persona 5". "Atlus tried to take down a PS3 emulator advertising 'Persona 5 '". "Persona 5 is up and running on one of the PC's PlayStation 3 emulators". "Persona 5 is playable on PC with this PS3 emulator". "RPCS3 Gets Performance Boost with Vulkan API".
The demand, however, was settled by only removing all Persona 5 references from the page. The action was motivated by the Patreon page making frequent mentions on the emulator's progress on emulating Persona 5. In September 2017, Persona developer Atlus issued a DMCA takedown notice against RPCS3's Patreon page. RPCS3 received significant media attention in April 2017 for its ability to emulate Persona 5, achieving playability prior to the game's Western release date. Apart from the game itself to be run, the emulator requires the PlayStation 3's firmware, which can be downloaded from Sony's official website. The PC must have at least 4 GB of RAM, 8 GB recommended, an x86-64 CPU and a GPU supporting one of the supported graphics APIs: OpenGL 4.3 or greater, or Vulkan, the latter being recommended.
Requirements Īs of March 21, 2020, the emulator requires a 64-bit version of Windows 7 or later, a modern Linux distribution, or a modern BSD distribution. In May 2017, it was reported that the implementation of the Vulkan graphics API had shown some performance improvements approaching 400%, pushing several games into "playable" status. On February 16, 2017, RPCS3 gained the ability to install official PlayStation 3 firmware directly to its core file system. On February 9, 2017, RPCS3 received its first implementation of a PPU Thread Scheduler, enhancing its emulation of the many-core Cell microprocessor. The emulator was first able to successfully run simple homebrew projects in September 2011 and got its first public release in June 2012 as v0.0.0.2.
The developers initially hosted the project on Google Code and eventually moved it to GitHub on August 27, 2013. Despite the general idea that the complexity of the PlayStation 3's Cell architecture would prevent it from being emulated", RPCS3 was started on May 23, 2011, by programmers DH and Hykem.