Sony Interactive Entertainment is currently working on native PS5 compatibility for PS3 titles, based on the latest rumor.
According to XboxEra’s Shpeshal_Nick (via), compatibility for PS3 titles is being worked on at Sony Interactive Entertainment in order to run them natively on PS5. It’s unclear whether this will apply to physical copies of PS3 games.
PS3 game emulation had been rumored to be in development for PS5 in the past. Back in June, Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb, who is known for his industry insights, had shared that PS3 emulation is something that he had heard to be in the works for quite some time. He had thought it would get revealed earlier this year when he had first heard about it. That clearly didn’t happen, but he said that it doesn’t mean it will never happen.
If native compatibility for PS3 titles on PS5 does indeed happen, it will likely come with certain graphical enhancements that aren’t much different from the improvements seen with PS1 and PS2 titles. The PS3 currently remains the only PlayStation console that has yet to have any of its titles run natively on the PS5.
The PS3 is powered by a 64-bit Cell microprocessor developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM as its CPU. This processor consists of a 3.2 GHz PowerPC-based “Power Processing Element” (PPE) and eight Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). The console’s graphics are managed by the Nvidia RSX ‘Reality Synthesizer,’ which supports resolutions from 480i/576i (SD) up to 1080p (HD). The system includes 256 MB of XDR DRAM main memory and 256 MB of GDDR3 video memory for the RSX. Initially, Sony intended to forgo a dedicated GPU, assuming the Cell processor could handle all graphical processing. However, developers, including the ICE team from Naughty Dog, showed Sony that a GPU was necessary for adequate performance, especially compared to the Xbox 360. Consequently, Sony added the Nvidia RSX GPU in the final development stage of the PlayStation 3.
