a new job ad, reported by PlayStation lifestyle after he was discovered reset era, strongly suggests that Sony may be trying to hire an engineer to fix its PS3 emulation. There are also rumors that old PS3 peripherals will work on the new machine. Which would be all such a relief.
If you’ve attended Sony’s relaunched PlayStation Plus for PS4 and PS5, you’ll have noticed that exploring the 400+ games in its vast archives all needs to be streamed on PS3. And oh man, the streaming sucks.
The PS5 hasn’t previously been able to run PS3 emulation, making for a huge disappointment when it comes to missing out on this entire generation of games on modern computers. The newly launched PS+ offers the possibility to download games from PS1, PSP, PS2, PS4 and of course PS5. But for the PS3, streaming gets stuck, and in my experience, at least, it’s an annoying jumble of pixels and bugs.
So there is hope in the form of a new job posting for a software development engineer, published by PlayStation Studios on LinkedIn.
Our position as a software development engineer works within the tools and technology team at PlayStation Studios to support the remastered “Classics” for PS4 and PS5. Classic games run on emulation of older PlayStation platforms. As a Classics engineer, you would work closely with a group of other engineers, producers, and QA teams to fix bugs, add new features, and develop new emulators.
It’s this “development of new emulators” that excites me because unless they go rogue and intend to let people run their GBA ROMs on the console, the only emulator that really needs development is the PS3.
At the same time, gamerant has sighted a new patent from Sony showing a desire to get a range of PS3 peripherals to work on the PS5, including the EyeToy, the PS mouse and PS Move controllers.
Try to play a little Lego Pirates of the Caribbean When my boy was streaming on the newly launched PS+ the other day, the game kept crashing into a sleazy mess of giant pixels. I checked the internet connection on the PS5, which reported 875 MB/s, which I think should be the case only over enough to stream an eleven year old game. And yet we were plagued by those crappy screen crashes, input lag at the end of the game, and a message saying my 1GB internet connection isn’t good enough for streaming. Which is just embarrassing.
So bring on the emulation! Of course, working PS3 emulators already exist for PC, and given the power of the PS5, replicating this on console shouldn’t be too difficult. However, getting it to work on PS4 might prove more difficult. Still, it’s nice to at least hold on to that little glimmer of hope.
Also, I find it incredibly funny that these companies, often the scourge of the emulation communities, are now turning to the same technology to bolster their business models.