Featured Image Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Topics: Retro Gaming
The PlayStation 3 was the worst performing console in Sony's long and glorious history, and for good reason, releasing at far too high a price and failing to offer a package that proved to be as compelling as the Xbox 360 (outside of Asia).
Despite that relatively poor performance, it's actually a bit of an underrated generation for PlayStation in terms of the games on offer, and it's well worth returning to in 2026 to play through some genuinely great releases.
If you still own a PS3, then you can simply boot that back up and get playing, but you can still get involved in the fun if your hardware has given up the ghost in the preceding two decades or so.
The most obvious method would be to subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium to access the catalogue of old games available and stream them directly to your PlayStation 5.
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There are several drawbacks to that, chiefly that you'll need to fork out your hard earned cash on both a PS5 and a PS Plus subscription.
Additionally, the PS3 streaming service has been notably down over the last few weeks, with Sony yet to issue any kind of response about how they plan to address it.
That leaves us with the next best option, if you already own the games but have no way of playing them, which is emulating them on PC using specialist software.
As first reported by WCCFTech, popular emulator RPCS3 has been continuing to make great strides in the world of PS3 emulation, so much so that they are now able to run a smidge over 70% of games from the console without issues.
A further 25% of games from the PS3 can be run by the emulator in some capacity, though you may encounter major bugs, performance issues or glitches along the way. In total, that leaves just 2.87% of games that aren't playable in any capacity using the software, which is genuinely impressive considering how far they have come in a short time.
Not only that, but the team behind the emulator have continued to make great strides with compatibility, allowing the emulator to run on more devices than ever before, including several handheld solutions.
So if you already own the game but don't have any way of playing it, then what are you waiting for? Get out there and emulate to your heart's content.