Every PlayStation 3 Game Now Boots Up On The RPCS3 Emulator

Sony’s PlayStation console series has become a household name around the world. But, even one of the most well-known console series on the planet can have a blip in between. PlayStation 3 was that blip for Sony as it got a mixed reception on release and the Xbox 360 was the more popular choice.

But, the console grew on the gamers as time went by leading to a lifetime sales total of 87 million units. Given the slow start and its high price, this was a big achievement and PS3 is culturally and historically significant. Now, the online emulator for the console, RPCS3, boots up every game that the PlayStation 3 had in its lifetime.

Major Takeaways

• PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 loads every game on the console.
• Almost 68% of these games are playable without a hitch, while 28.59% have glitches.
• More than three thousand PS3 games are playable on the emulator in these two categories.

The official Twitter page of the emulator announced this news through a Tweet. First, they tell us that the loadable compatibility category of RPCS3 is now at 0 games. RPCS3 has this category for PlayStation 3 games that display a black screen with a framerate. 

What that means is that no PlayStation 3 game now goes to a black screen when launched on the emulator. Something like this is a big deal for an open-source video game emulator made by fans. Every PlayStation 3 game now works on the PC emulator for the console.

We are delighted to announce that as of today, the RPCS3 Loadable compatibility category has reached 0 GAMES!

This means there are no PS3 games left that boot to a black screen on the emulator – every PS3 game at the very least boots and shows image output.

Happy holidays! pic.twitter.com/3ZAWFzbyGP

— RPCS3 (@rpcs3) December 25, 2022

But, the extent of this success is different for every title. The Tweet displays an image that shows us several categories and the percentage of games that fall into them. Almost 68% of the games(67.98% to be exact) are “Playable” without any game-breaking glitches.

Hence, you can play to completion 68% of the games PlayStation 3 had on this emulator without a hitch. Moving on, 28.59% of the games fall into the “Ingame” category on the RPCS3 emulator. For clarity, this includes titles that can’t be finished, have worrying glitches, or just don’t perform to a certain standard.

So, more than a quarter of PlayStation 3 games don’t play as well on the emulator. Considering it is an open-source emulator for PC, this isn’t such a bad number. You can still play these games on a PC, they will just not run as they would on a PS3.

After this, we have the “Intro” category, which has all the games that run but don’t make it past the menus. Only 3.42% of the PlayStation 3 games have this fate on the emulator, which is an insanely low number. You can basically play every game on the RPCS3 emulator besides a handful of them. 

There are two other categories in the image, but both of them have zero titles in them. First up is the “Loadable” category we talked about at the start of the article. No PlayStation 3 games have a black screen with the window’s title showing the framerate on the emulator now.

So, this category has no titles in it now. The last category is titled “Nothing” and contains games that don’t initialize properly, don’t load, or crash the RPCS3 emulator itself. Zero games are present in this category too, which is a big win. 

Not everyone has the PlayStation Plus Premium or a PlayStation 5 to play old PS3 games. Hence, seeing emulators like the RPCS3 available for people on PCs is amazing. As of now, 2323 games are playable on the console emulator while 977 can go Ingame, and 93 go to Intro.

This matches up with the percentages we saw above and brings the total number of games on the emulator to 3393. So, the RPCS3 emulator has more than three thousand PlayStation 3 games for players to enjoy. Hopefully, we see more and more games on the emulator so players can relive their nostalgia.