Hundreds of PS3 games to be saved from digital store closure with new PC ports

PlayStation recently announced that it’ll be closing the PlayStation 3 digital store, meaning a lot of its contents are about to become lost media.

It’s not the end of the world because most of the PlayStation 3 library was released on a physical disc, but it’s still a shame for anyone who still owns one of the consoles.

The PlayStation 3 store closure has been somewhat swept under the rug as of late due to PlayStation simultaneously announced plans to scrap physical media production from 2028 onwards.

Backlash to these decisions has been immense, and while the bulk of rebellion is coming from those who hate the idea of an all-digital future, PlayStation 3 enthusiasts are hard at work to ensure as many PlayStation 3 games as possible can be preserved and enjoyed online.

READ MORE: PlayStation's all-digital future will see your games wiped for making one mistake

Functional PC ports of PlayStation 3 games could be a major milestone in emulation

Over the past year or so you may have heard the term “decompilation” being thrown around. These are deconstructions of game code done with the intention of reprogramming, or rewriting it, for different means.

It led to games not previously available on PC being playable on your hardware, such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s Ship of Harkinian port.

Emulators and ROMs are still needed to make them work, but the benefits include better optimisation, mod support and more.

Work on PlayStation 3 decompilations has already begun, and it’s going to be a game-changer from an emulator’s standpoint.

Without getting too technical, a new decompilation tool has been created and put to work on some of the biggest and best PlayStation 3 games money can buy. It's being described as a feat of "engineering genius" by Video Game Esoterica, as it successfully creates a workaround for the console's dastardly, but brilliant, Cell Processor.

A tool like this has been years in the making. The PlayStation 3 from an engineering standpoint is still impressive to this day, but the hardware Sony crammed into it such as the Cell Processor made it a nightmare to develop for.

Due to this most PlayStation 3 games are notoriously difficult to successfully emulate, but reverse-engineering the code of these games using this decompilation tool should make life easier in that regard. The more progress on this, the better.

READ MORE: Welcome Back PS3, 70% of Games Now Playable For Free

This perfectly highlights one of PlayStation’s biggest flaws this generation; it has no care, nor respect, for its own history.

If you want to play some classic PlayStation games on your modern console, you need to subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium just to have access. This feature didn’t even work for months and yet there was no urgency in fixing it.

Some PlayStation 2 and most, if not all, PlayStation 3 games are only available via cloud-streaming too. What a dreadful way to experience the peak gameplay experience that is God of War and God of War II.

It shouldn’t fall to the fans to make these games playable in the modern day, even though it is really entertaining to see gamers do what these mega corporations can’t.

The work that’s going into decompiling PlayStation 3 games is amazing and should be backed all the way, but it wouldn’t be necessary if PlayStation would just find a way to make these games work on modern platforms, or have a lot of them ported to PC itself.

Xbox might have its own suite of issues, but at least its backwards compatibility programme has given it a leg-up over its competitors.