PS5 can easily run PS3 games - the console works perfectly with the RPCS3 emulator

A new unofficial feature has been discovered on the PlayStation 5 console: more than five years after the device's release, users have learned how to run Linux on it, albeit only on older versions of the system software. This has opened up access to a number of non-standard use cases — including full emulation of PlayStation 3 games.

One enthusiast conducted just such an experiment. After developer Andrew Nguyen published the Linux bootloader, user Retropierdolnik demonstrated the RPCS3 emulator running on PS5. The published video shows MotorStorm: Pacific Rift running — judging by the footage, the project runs quite smoothly, which looks impressive for a system where such functionality is not officially provided.

The high performance of the PS5 explains the result: the console is equipped with a powerful eight-core Zen 2 architecture processor and RDNA 2-based graphics, which allows it to confidently handle emulation tasks. Moreover, as early as 2024, similar tests using an AMD BC-250 mining card, built on the same chip, showed that the hardware easily runs PlayStation 3 games even at increased resolution.

Against the backdrop of such experiments, the absence of official backward compatibility with PS3 on PS5 is particularly noticeable. Currently, running games from the third generation of Sony consoles is only possible through cloud services, which do not always provide stable quality.