Despite removingResistance: Fall of Manand Resistance 2 from the PS Plus catalogue in April, Sony remains committed to expanding its portfolio of PS3 games for the service.
Speaking toGame File, PlayStation vice president of global services Nick Maguire said they “haven’t ruled [new games] out”, and that “The opportunities are there”. However, he expressed that “there are a lot of PS3 games already streaming,” with most of the notable first-party exclusives available right now.
“We’ve got 80 collections of games across the catalogue,” he said. “So we want to keep it fresh and bring in new games. Sometimes that means taking a few games out at the same time to keep the proposition interesting and help people find new games as well.”
“Works Just Fine On My PC”
“Through streaming” will no doubt be a prickly statement to accept for players, as frustration continues to bubble over the lack of PS3 backwards compatibility; a Reddit post from just five days ago attracted nearly 5,000 upvotes simply for asking,“WTF is PlayStation waiting for to bring PS3 games to PS5?”
Rumours abound thatSony is developing an emulator behind the scenes, with PS Plus Classics developer Implicit Conversions even stating earlier this year thatthey’re “dreaming” about making a native emulator. But with no official word, PlayStation’s approach to its PS3 catalogue continues to be a point of contention.
Many point to Microsoft having built-in Xbox 360 emulation for the Xbox One and Series X/S as a sign that Sony ‘doesn’t care,’ but the two systems couldn’t be more different. The PS3 was a notoriously difficult console to develop for due to its unique cell processor, which is why so many of its ports were vastly inferior to Xbox’s, likeOblivionandFallout: New Vegas. It being a harder console to develop for means it’s a harder console to emulate, and even some of the most successful hobbyist attempts aren’t without their issues.
Take RPCS3, the most well-known emulator, which has an extensive and impressive catalogue of over 3,600 compatible PS3 games. Despite its success in making 69 percent of the console’s library playable on PC, there’s still a litany of performance issues and bugs that would be inexcusable in an official port. It’s much cleaner to simply stream the games, even if that demands a strong and stable internet connection.
Maybe one day we’ll see native PS3 emulation — perhaps next generation with the more powerful PS6 — but for now, we’re stuck with streaming. What games we might see next, that’s another debate.
