Sony Is Apparently Still Looking Into Making PS3 Games Run Natively On PS5

When PlayStation announced its upcoming new tiered PS Plus subscriptions last week, we were excited to see that legacy games from older PlayStation consoles were finally going to make their way to PS4 and PS5.

That excitement was quickly tempered somewhat though by the revelation that while a selection of PS1, PS2 and PSP games would downloadable and playable natively on console for subscribers of the relevant tier, PS3 titles will only be playable via cloud streaming. While that will probably work just fine for most, the trouble is when it comes to countries where PlayStation doesn’t currently offer any cloud game streaming options – places like Australia.

But while the usual reasons are being thrown around for this annoying wrinkle, things like the unique and complex architecture of the PS3 processor being too difficult to emulate even on a vastly more powerful machine, there may be a small sliver of hope yet.

Industry insider and frequent tea-spiller Jeff Grubb recently said on an episode of GamesBeat on YouTube that he believes work on running PS3 games natively on PS5 consoles is still underway at PlayStation. You can watch the video here or find the relevant quote below:

“Since talking about this all week, I’ve looked, I’ve asked… it sounds like Sony might be working on emulation for PS3 on PS5. It may take some time. I wish they would come out and tell us that.

Tell us that you care about this stuff because that is what was missing from the PS Plus announcement… to me, it seemed like they didn’t care about any of it. They just slapped it together, put a new name on it and sold it.”

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This comes alongside some developers sharing that they still believe PS3 emulation is entirely possible on Sony’s newest console, such as Modern Vintage Gamer (developer at Night Dive Studio):

So while none of this is in any way a confirmation or indication that Sony is planning on bringing PS3 games to the PS5 natively, something that would allow us Aussies to get in on the emulation action, it certainly helps keep that flame of hope alive for just a little longer.