Sony recently announced the revamped PlayStation Plus tiers system that brings over 700 games from across the PS1, PS2, PSP, PS4 and PS5 libraries to a few subscription service options. However, PS3 games will only be playable via streaming, meaning it will be locked out to countries that don’t have streaming capabilities yet. A new report suggests that Sony is looking into PS3 emulation, but it might take time.
According to VentureBeat journalist Jeff Grubb who asked around Sony regarding their future plans for improving the new PS Plus, he found out that they “might” be working on proper PS3 emulation but it might take some time. All other generations have seemingly been emulated successfully, leaving the PS3 library in the PS Plus tiers as an outlier.
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Players will be able to access the PS3 library via streaming only, meaning some countries, including South Africa, won’t get the benefits of this since streaming is not readily available here. Emulating the PS3 will allow the games to be playable without the need for streaming, therefore allowing players to download the games to their consoles and keep them.
This is only the case for other generations at the moment, though Sony’s announcement of the rebranded service has been met with some confusion and criticism online.
Grubb was among the many to criticise the reveal of the new PS Plus, stating that Sony should have communicated its plans better so that the public can understand the tiers and what they offer in a bit more detail. As it stands, we have a basic skeleton of what each tier offers, but no idea what the libraries look like. Perhaps Sony is saving this for a later event.
“Emulation of PS3 is absolutely possible on PS5 hardware,” said Night Dive Studios’ Dimitris Giannakis. “Sony has never been interested in investing the millions to make it happen, however.”
If these reports are true, then Sony might be looking into bringing proper PS3 emulation to PS5 at some point. When the revamped PS Plus launches in June (and slowly rolls out to various regions), the PS3 library will only be accessible via streaming or not accessible at all to certain countries without the infrastructure to support streaming.
Source: Video Games Chronicle
