If you’re familiar with the PS5 emulation scene, then you’d know that progress on it has been relatively slow, if not inert. However, that appears to have changed following Sony’s announcement that it will end physical game disc production for new PlayStation games in January 2028, which was followed by renewed activity in the PS5 emulation scene. Now, a recent report claims that an experimental open-source PS5 emulator has successfully run a handful of titles at a playable 60 FPS.
According to a post on X, the developers of SharpEmu, the aforementioned PS5 emulator, have tested 55 different titles, with 12 of them able to reach gameplay. Six of those 12 were classified as playable at 60 FPS. These titles are Dreaming Sarah, Void Terrarium, New Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja, Tetris Forever, Hoa, and Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered.
While it may not seem like much at first, being able to get six PS5 titles running at a playable 60 FPS is a significant milestone for emulation. That said, it is worth noting that, with the exception of Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered, the aforementioned titles are 2D games, spanning genres such as roguelikes, platformers, puzzle games, and side-scrolling beat ’em ups.
The feat was achieved using SharpEmu v0.0.4-release.2, the emulator’s latest public build released on 25 September. According to its developers, the update brings several improvements, including better SPIR-V shader translation and improved support for the Vulkan graphics API.
For some background, SharpEmu is an open-source emulator written in C# that supports Windows, Linux, and macOS. It uses Vulkan and MoltenVK for graphics processing, while its CPU emulation benefits from the PS5 and modern PCs sharing the x86-64 instruction set through AMD’s Zen 2 architecture. Rather than having to translate instructions from an entirely different CPU architecture, SharpEmu can execute the PS5’s x86-64 instructions natively on compatible PC hardware. The emulator still has to reproduce other parts of the console’s software and hardware environment, however, including system functions, game executables, shaders, and graphics commands.
While there has been substantial progress compared to the early days of PS5 emulation, SharpEmu is still a long way from achieving full emulation. According to Tom’s Hardware, the emulator continues to face challenges with more demanding 3D titles, while its developers stress that SharpEmu remains in its early stages and is “an experimental emulator intended for research and educational purposes. This project does not contain any copyrighted system firmware, game data, or proprietary PlayStation assets.”
Early stages or otherwise, the progress made so far offers a glimpse of what could eventually be possible as development continues. With SharpEmu and other PS5 emulation projects gradually improving compatibility and performance, the scene could continue to evolve in the coming years. And if successful, this could represent another step towards digital preservation. For now, however, full PS5 emulation remains a work in progress, and it is still too early to say how far these projects will ultimately go.
(Source: Tom’s Harware)
