Compared to other game consoles like the PlayStation 2, GameCube, Wii, Game Boy, and Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation 3 (PS3) has always been notoriously difficult to emulate. That’s largely because of its uniquely complex Cell processor. Still, over the past decade, PS3 emulation has made huge strides, and now one of the leading open-source PS3 emulators, RPCS3, has hit a major milestone.
In a recent video from the RPCS3 development team highlighting the emulator’s progress in 2025, the team revealed that 70 percent of PS3 games are now playable, with stable performance and no game-breaking glitches. That includes major titles like God of War HD, The Sly Collection, Demon’s Souls, Final Fantasy XIII, LittleBigPlanet, and plenty more.
Out of the 3,562 PS3 games currently listed on RPCS3’s website, 2,513 titles (70.94 percent) are now considered playable. Another 26.19 percent fall into the “in-game” classification, meaning they boot and run but still suffer from issues like poor performance or game-breaking bugs. An example of a game classified as this is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which requires a separate game patch to be downloaded to mod the game and unlock the frame rate and improve performance.
Beyond that, just 2.84 percent of games are stuck in the “intro” state, where they reach the menu but can’t be played, while an almost negligible 0.03 percent are classified as “loadable,” meaning they display a black screen and a frame rate but don’t load any further. You can view a full list of compatible PS3 games on RPCS3’s website.
How to get started with RPCS3 yourself
The emulator is available on Windows and Linux
With the PS3 turning 20 this year, it makes me really happy to see the team behind RPCS3 make such meaningful progress toward making the console’s entire library playable through emulation. There’s still lots of work to be done, but having 70 percent of PS3 games playable is a big deal and a big win for game preservation. Plus, with the current state RPCS3 is in, there’s a good chance that many of the games you remember playing back in the day already run just fine.
So, if you’re yearning for some PS3 nostalgia, I recommend giving RPCS3 a shot. The emulator is free to download from RPCS3’s website and is available on Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD. There’s also an experimental macOS version, though, as the name suggests, performance may not be on par with the Windows and Linux builds.
It’s important to keep in mind that RPCS3 is an emulator, so like other emulators, such as those for the PS2 or Nintendo Switch, you’ll need to provide your own legally obtained PS3 system software and games before you can play anything on it. I won’t get into the specific details here on how to do that, but there are plenty of guides online that walk you through the process of dumping your own PS3 games and firmware to your PC so you can play the emulator.
Now, if emulation isn’t your thing, it is worth noting that you can play PS3 games on the PS5 and PS4, but it’s all handled through cloud streaming, so the games don’t actually run natively on the console and are streamed from the internet. On top of that, accessing PS3 titles through Sony’s Classics Catalog requires a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription, which costs $18 per month or $160 per year.
With all that in mind, if you have an old PS3 lying around, with 70 percent of its library now playable on RPCS3, now is as good a time as ever to dust it off and give emulation a try. And if you’re also looking to grow your PS3 game collection, I recently wrote about my experience buying PS3 games in 2026, along with the easiest ways to get started, which you can check out in my other Pocket-lint story here.
