RPCS3 PlayStation 3 Emulator Can Now Run Skate At 4K 60 FPS

As a fan of video game console emulation, I’m embarrassed to have missed the fact that there has been a fully working PlayStation 3 emulator for some time. It’s called RPCS3, and it doesn’t only support over 1,000 different titles, it’s also free and open-source. It’s even available for Linux (but no macOS, since Apple deprecated OpenGL in macOS Mojave, and doesn’t support Vulkan.)

What drew my attention to this emulator was a reddit thread which pointed to Skate now being fully playable with the emulator. If you have the horsepower for it, the emulator can even handle the game at 4K/60, giving a seriously crisp, fluid experience against playing it on the original console. Here’s a video of the game in action:

Beyond knowing that the emulator plays Skate and many other games well, I have not touched it myself outside of downloading it and opening it up to snag the screenshot at the top of the page. Currently, I can’t even access the official website due to a traffic limit, so if you want to give the software a download yourself, you may have to time it right.

It seems like Vulkan is the go-to API for this emulator, but DirectX 12 and OpenGL are also supported. Like many emulators, RPCS3 requires you to seek out official firmware, but this is a rare case where that firmware is readily available straight from the source. As for the games, you will need to either rip them yourself, or source them another way – of course only downloading games you already own.

It’s amazing with as far as we’ve come with PSone, PS2, and PS3 emulation, emulation for the original Xbox remains so elusive!