This week, the developers of PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 announced RPCS3 now has stable, native Arm64 architecture support for Windows, macOS and Linux platforms— Arm64 architecture support is very clear, even including Raspberry Pi 5 in all devices, completely breaking through the limits of simulation Raspberry Pi 5. in the past, The Raspberry Pi 5 is also seen as a copycat of the GameCube and Wii (Wii is less efficient) – but with the right settings tweaks, it seems possible to do PS3 emulation even on today’s entry-level Arm hardware.
Running the PS3 emulation on the Raspberry Pi 5 was quite “pushing the limits of PlayStation 3 emulation” – given the settings used, by scaling down the PSP’s output resolution to just 273p, this made the event look like a real PlayStation Portable ( PSP ) game compared to the PS3’s native 720p. But this makes it actually possible to run some 3D games, including Mars (and god of war 2) HD (originally a PS2 game), Catherine, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm,etc. Sure, 2D games will be more playable, but even reversing the playable frame rates of PS3-era 3D games is well beyond what most people can emulate with a Raspberry Pi 5.
On the MacOS side, native support for the Arm architecture resulted in huge performance gains when playing PS3 games on Apple Silicon compared to simply emulating x86. By simply running natively, rather than forcing an x86 conversion on top of a dense PS3 hardware emulation, frame rates can be increased by 50-100%, making truly high-performance Arm-powered PlayStation 3 emulation a reality. Not an unattainable dream.
Unlike the Raspberry Pi 5 test, which is more or less similar to the PlayStation Portable, the Apple Silicon test showcases the power of some truly PS3 powerhouses, including God of War III and skating 3. These games are more difficult to emulate than the PS2 to PS3 HD port, e.g. god of war high qualitybut they are still quite playable on Arm-based hardware, as long as it has enough power to support the experience.