PS3 Emulation Hits Big Milestone As RPCS3 Achieves 70% Compatibility

PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 is one of the scene's crown jewels, and the development team achieved several milestones in 2025, including 70.55% game compatibility, major performance improvements (including better utilization of AVX-512 than most modern games) and even improved steering wheel support. Improvements to the community-run PSN replacement RPCN have also enabled online play in several games that have otherwise been left offline by their original developers, including Metal Gear Online and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. The widespread performance improvements have not only made targeting 120 Hz on modern PCs viable, but even low-power handhelds like the Steam Deck or ARM-based smartphones can now play a majority of the PlayStation 3's library at good framerates.

For those up-to-date on the emulation scene at large, advancements in RPCS3 may not be as immediately impressive compared to, say, the major advancements made on ShadPS4 and its effective Bloodborne emulation, but it's important to remember that the PlayStation 4 and onward leverage x86 architectures that are largely identical to what PCs already use. Technically-speaking, it's much harder to translate the Cell processor's various idiosyncrasies to x86 (or ARM64) than to run x86 code on other x86 machines, which is why emulation for some consoles isn't quite as far along. With that consideration, RPCS3 has progressed rapidly compared to virtually all emulators besides GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin.


The full 2025 highlights video posted to the RPCS3 YouTube channel exhibits performance and compatibility improvements for several major PS3 games, including Uncharted 2 & 3, Metal Gear Solid 4, Final Fantasy XIII, Skate 2, Ratchet & Clank Future, and Codemasters-developed racing games including Grid 3. For fans of PS3-era racing games, improved steering wheel support is likely the greatest improvement thanks to the emulator now supporting Logitech G27 passthrough for other racing wheels, rather than being locked to the PS3-era Logitech G27 specifically. Other miscellaneous improvements include improved overlay functionality (now with trophy tracking and custom SFX) and even microphone support being added to Rock Band 3 and Metal Gear Online.