Sony has announced that the revamped PlayStation Plus is going to launch in June, and that its highest tier, PlayStation Plus Premium, will bring with it a library of up to 340 games from older PlayStation consoles. That will include a number of PS3 games as well, though the fact that that particular group will only be available via cloud streaming (with all other games also being playable natively after downloads) has disappointed more than a few people.
That said, it seems like Sony might be working on a fix for that issue. During the recent GamesBeat Decides podcast, journalist Jeff Grubb stated that based on what he’s heard, Sony is working on a fix that allows native emulation of PS3 games on a PS5 (which may or may not have anything to do with this recent patent filed by PS5’s lead architect Mark Cerny). Grubb says “it may take some time”, though it seems that something is in the works, at the very least.
Natively running PS3 titles on other hardware has been notoriously difficult over the years, thanks to the eccentricities of the PS3’s Cell architecture, which has meant that many games in the system’s library have remained isolated and, as such, currently unplayable on most modern hardware. Emulation of PS3 games is definitely (and provably) possible though, so here’s hoping Sony figures something out sooner rather than later.