Are PS3 games returning to PS5?
A surprising development has emerged that will excite PlayStation 5 users. Native PS3 emulation, considered “impossible” for years due to the complex architecture of the PlayStation 3, may finally be a reality on PS5 hardware. While there has been no official statement from Sony, a game quietly released in the Asian market stands out as the first concrete example showing that PS3 games can run directly on PS5.
How Do PS3 Games Run on PS5?
At the heart of this development is Cloudberry Kingdom, a late-season PS3 game. The game is offered in two different versions on PS5: one is a classic PS5 port, and the other is a version called “PS3 Edition,” which runs through a PS3-specific emulator. This second version is based on a commercially developed, proprietary PS3 emulator by a small but ambitious team called RedoApps, and runs the game natively on PS5 hardware.
RedoApps’ founders state that they have been working for years on a custom emulation infrastructure targeting Sony’s older consoles. This system is not related to the widely known RPCS3 on the PC side and is designed entirely for commercial use. The team emphasizes that they have adopted a high-level emulation (HLE) approach and developed their own solution similar to the “save state” system that Sony has standardized in emulation in recent years.
The biggest obstacle to PS3 emulation was the console’s Cell processor and especially its SPU (Synergistic Processing Unit) architecture. Instead of replicating this complex architecture exactly, the RedoApps team aims to overcome it with a more flexible method that produces the same results. However, this approach needs to be adapted separately for each game; that is, not every PS3 game will work automatically, the development process will proceed on a game-by-game basis.
While the current target is smaller, standalone PS3 games, the team says that in the long term they want to bring AAA titles to PS5 as well. While it’s acknowledged that this will be a challenging and slow process, it’s particularly emphasized that it’s not entirely impossible. If this project progresses as expected, many forgotten games from the PS3 era could be revived on the PS5 after many years.
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