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RPCS3 Says 80% of PS3 Games Are Now Playable on PC, Up From 75% in July
The free, open-source PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 crossed 80% of the PS3 library rated Playable, after fixes to CPU, GPU and PS Move emulation, including a texture cache bug that broke Gran Turismo 5.
The team announced it on October 21. “80% of ALL PS3 games are now PLAYABLE on PC!” the project posted on X. “Thanks to improvements in the accuracy of CPU, GPU and PS Move emulation, many games have been moved to the Playable category.”
In RPCS3’s ratings, Playable means a game runs start to finish with “playable performance” and “no game-breaking glitches,” Jack Yarwood wrote at Time Extension. The figure was 75% in July.
The project describes itself on GitHub as “The world’s first free and open-source PlayStation 3 emulator/debugger, written in C++ for Windows, Linux, macOS and FreeBSD.” It’s licensed GPL-2.0.
@rpcs3's post on X
One of the bigger fixes came from a contributor named Yahfz. His pull request, merged September 30, explains the bug in one line: “The temporary texture cache was reusing a view without checking if the remap changed, so the game requested ONE but got the cached ZERO view.” The listed result: “Fixes GT5 missing shadows / windshield bug and windows of cars flashing white.”
Time Extension reports the change resolved “ALL remaining graphical bugs in Gran Turismo 5.” Developer kd-11 separately fixed a “corrupted rear-view mirror” in pre-1.05 editions of the game. Stability fixes from lead developer elad335 “reportedly allow all Ratchet & Clank PS3 games” to run without crashing, and the Buzz quiz games got new RPCS3-compatible online servers.
Other titles named in the update include Flower, Boku no Natsuyasumi 3, Armored Core: Verdict Day, 3D Dot Game Heroes, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Yakuza: Dead Souls, Blitz: The League II and Winter Sports 2010.
The team isn’t done for the year. “We’ve released lots of major updates this year, but 2026 isn’t over yet - we have even more coming soon!!!” it wrote. What’s in the remaining 20%, and which of those games are blocked by the same kind of bug, the post didn’t say.
The last 20% is usually the slowest. Games that remain off the list tend to lean on unusual hardware tricks, rare peripherals or online services that no longer exist, and the Buzz servers show the team is now rebuilding services as well as chips.
For anyone who runs a game library or an archive, that’s the shift worth watching. Emulating the hardware gets a disc to boot; bringing back the servers is what makes a multiplayer game whole again.
Where the next gains come from is the open question: more games moving up one at a time, or another single fix like Yahfz’s that knocks loose a whole group at once.