75% of PS3 games are said to be playable on PC

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A community-led game preservation project known as RPCS3, which started in 2011, has now announced that it can successfully run over 75% of PlayStation 3 games on PC. The news is important due to several recent developments and controversial decisions by Sony that could affect the future of PlayStation 3 games.

On July 1, 2026, Sony made two critical announcements. It revealed that the PS3 Store would become unavailable to all users in 2027. It was also revealed that the PlayStation would no longer accept new physical discs starting in January 2028. Both announcements were seen as a direct attack on game preservation efforts. But thanks to years of work by dedicated developers, fans may be able to keep many of their PS3 games long after the digital store closes.

RPCS3's archive has over 2,600 PC compatible PS3 games

In a recent tweet, RPCS3 announced that over 75% of the PlayStation 3 games on the list are playable on PC without any game breaking issues. About 23% can run on a PC but “either cannot be completed, has serious errors, or has insufficient performance.” RPCS3 is an open source PS3 emulator that works on Windows, Linux, macOS and FreeBSD. According to the team behind it, “The aim of the project is to fully and accurately emulate the Sony PlayStation 3 Computer Entertainment System in its entirety using the power of open source community and reverse engineering.”

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RPCS3 emulator statistics

  • 75.33% PC compatible PS3 games

  • 22.93% PS3 games with suboptimal performance on PC

  • 1.69% PS3 games that can be launched but are not playable

  • 0.06% PS3 games showing a black screen

RPCS3 encourages players to use only legally obtained copies of PS3 games on the emulator and is against piracy. While RPCS3's legality falls into a gray area, the fact that it's an open source project that doesn't profit from PS3 game emulation helps many see it as a safe program for running classic games on PC.

The RPCS3 emulator has an official website where players can search for their favorite PS3 games to see if they are compatible with PC or not.

While RPCS3 has been working on its emulator since 2011, there is currently a new wave of developers and engineers trying to do the same for PlayStation 5 games. Unlike RPCS3's game preservation-oriented purpose, however, these new moves are seen as part of the backlash against Sony's decision to discontinue PlayStation discs. Reports suggest that a few groups have already been able to emulate some aspects of some 3D PS5 games on PC, which should be an alarming sign for the Japanese company.

In May 2026, PlayStation changed its PC port strategy, with reports indicating that it would no longer release its first-party stories for single-player games on PC. It can be seen as an open invitation to even more developers to come in and try to emulate these games on PC with or without Sony's permission. It remains to be seen how Sony will react to the current emulation efforts and if they will try to take a stronger stance against them as it moves towards an all-digital platform.

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