Over its many years of development, we’ve seen the PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 breeze past plenty of major milestones: including allowing for the injection of new post-effects such as AMD’s FSR while continually reducing the number of unsupported titles. Furthering these efforts, the team have revealed that 75% of the entire PS3 library is now fully playable through the emulator.

In going to the project’s official site, users can find a full compatibility list of titles, showcasing which games are supported by RPCS3 and whether to expect any issues.

Split into 5 tiers of support, each game is placed into one of the following categories:

1. Nothing (Games that don't initialize properly, not loading at all and/or crashing the emulator)
2. Loadable (Games that display a black screen with a framerate on the window's title)
3. Intro (Games that display image but don't make it past the menus)
4. Ingame (Games that either can't be finished, have serious glitches or have insufficient performance)
5. Playable (Games that can be completed with playable performance and no game breaking glitches)

As of now, across the PlayStation 3’s more-than 3500 games, 75.33% are considered to be playable, with 22.93% achieving ‘ingame’ status. At this point, very few titles suffer from major issues, with just 1.71% still stuck in the ‘intro’ stage and 0.03% only being loadable. Like we reported back in 2021, a total of 0% of the PS3 library remains in the ‘nothing’ stage.

Speaking of 2021, back then, the compatibility list looked quite a bit different, with around 63% of games being ‘playable’, 30% reaching ‘ingame’ and nearly 6% stuck at the intro.

With just how much momentum RPCS3 has seen over the years, there will hopefully come a time in which 100% of the PS3’s library will be fully playable. We will have to wait and see how long it takes.

KitGuru says: How often do you use emulators for gaming? Are you impressed with RPCS3’s progress over the years? Let us know down below.

Back in early 2021, Sony announced its intentions to shut down the online PlayStation 3 and Vita storefronts. After plenty of backlash from fans, the console maker backtracked, pushing back the closure. Unfortunately, this only delayed the inevitable, with Sony now giving us a concrete timeline for the PS3/Vita’s deaths.

Taking to the PlayStation blog to make the announcement, SIE’s senior content communications director Sid Shuman relayed the disappointing news, writing:

“After nearly two decades of supporting the PS3 console generation, we wanted to let you know we will be closing the PlayStation Store on PS3, as well as on PS Vita. PlayStation Store on PS3 will close in select markets starting this year, followed by global closures for PS3 and PS Vita next year.”

While users will still be able to redownload any games which they already own, no new purchases will be possible come this impending closure. Speaking of, Sony did offer a concrete timeline for the shut down, with different regions being impacted at different times:

• Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua – August 2026
• Other Latin American and Middle Eastern countries – Late 2026
• All other countries (including the UK) – July 2027

This means that most of us still have roughly a year to boost our libraries with any games in our backlogs. This includes many different PS1 and PSP titles which are currently unplayable on PS4/5.

As mentioned, the PS3 and Vita storefronts were initially planned to be shut down half a decade ago now, and was only saved thanks to fan backlash. Given this, we knew the announcement could come at any point, and so it is welcome at least to have had an extra 5 or so more years with these platforms.

KitGuru says: What do you think of the announcement? Was it inevitable? Are there any digital games you still need to pick up? Let us know down below.

Over the years RPCS3 has become perhaps the most complete and fleshed out game emulator around, with the PlayStation 3 emulation software supporting pretty much every single game from the platform at this point. Of course, as with all such software, it isn’t flawless. That said, the latest update to RPCS3 makes running your 7th-gen titles even more seamless.

Taking to Twitter to make the announcement, the official RPCS3 team unveiled their latest update to the PS3 emulation software, writing: “Games now automatically configure themselves with the RPCS3 Wiki settings. Plug and play – no configuration. Playing PS3 games has never been so easy.”

For the uninitiated, the RPCS3 wiki page features game-specific tweaks and toggles recommended in order to make for the best overall experience. While users could always apply these changes themselves on a game-by-game basis, the update should allow for pretty much a one-click solution for near-complete seamlessness.

Explaining how this works exactly, the team stated “When you boot a game, it uses the settings defined in your global configuration, plus the wiki database value overrides. If you have a custom config set on that game, it only uses that instead. When creating a custom config, you can create it based on the database settings.”

As mentioned, RPCS3 is easily one of the most impressive emulation projects around, especially due to the awkward and unique architecture of the PS3’s hardware making such an endeavour that much more difficult to crack.

Luckily the RPCS3 team appear committed to making the emulator the best that it can be (and thankfully Sony does not appear interested in taking the project down).

KitGuru says: Have you checked out the emulator before? How big of a deal is this latest update to you? Let us know down below.

The popular PS3 emulator is now closer to true plug-and-play disc backups as encrypted ISO support has been added to the utility. RPCS3 Removes the Requirement of Loading a Decrypted PS3 ISO and Can Now Directly Play Encrypted ISO Files The popular PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 continues to make steady progress in simplifying game loading. As one of the most popular PS3 emulators on the planet, RPCS3 has undergone several changes over the last decade and has brought major updates in the last few months. A few months ago, RPCS3 devs made it possible to directly load the game through […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/rpcs3-enables-encrypted-playstation-3-disc-iso-loading/