Hackers prove PS4 can handle the latest God of War project

Hackers have started running PS5 games on a jailbroken PS4, with God of War: Sons of Sparta running at a stable 40 fps.

Enthusiasts continue to surprise with experiments on old hardware. In recent weeks, ports of Nintendo Switch 2 games running on older consoles have surfaced, and now programmers have reached Sony’s closed ecosystem. An EmuFive tool has appeared online, allowing PS5 software code to run directly on a jailbroken PS4.

At the core of the project is a modified KytyPS5 emulator integrated into the PS4 Multiboot environment. The program translates hardware instructions in real time, allowing the older console to execute code originally designed for the new generation.

The Jaguar processor installed in the PS4 does not support modern AVX2, FMA, and BMI2 instruction sets. A dedicated module replaces the missing features with software equivalents on the fly. The results of the experiment turned out to be unexpectedly good.

Published footage from the PS4 Pro showcases God of War: Sons of Sparta running at a stable 40 fps. They also managed to launch the version of Hollow Knight: Silksong intended for the next-generation consoles. Developers are currently conducting extended tests with other games from the PS5 library.

However, one should not expect full-fledged performance from the most demanding 3D blockbusters. No software tricks can bridge the technological gap between the outdated Jaguar processor and the modern Zen 2 architecture. When rendering complex game world geometry, the limitations of the old hardware become particularly noticeable, and the frame rate drops sharply. It is impossible to bypass the physical capabilities of the hardware in this way.