i believe some PS2 games also shipped on CDs, the ones that discs were blue. Agreed that it will never happen though since they want to be able to monetize them.
That's a firmware decision Sony made to hobble jailbreak vectors and excuse no classic BC. All BD drives can read CD and DVD, its literally part of the official specs. They can fix this at any time if they wanted to.
It's not simply a firmware limitation. CD discs require additional optical system components to read since laser diodes can only emit a single wavelength of light. DVDs, CDs, and Blu-ray discs all use different wavelengths.
To my knowledge the CD was never used as an attack vector against the PS3, it was the USB where USB devices tricked the PS3 into think it was on a Sony test bench so it would boot into maintenance mode. After that you could just transfer files on off the PS3 through the network or USB.
BD drives use a completely different kind of laser. Some BD drives exist that can read CD and DVD, but those have two different lasers inside to allow for this functionality.
Don't forget that a significant number of PS2 games were on CD media and not DVD-based media, especially for games released in the first few years of the console.
I don't have a PS5 or PS4, but strictly talking about tech, I was under the impression that every new "optical media tech" was backwards compatible with the ones that came before.
EDIT: Doh! I've replied to the wrong person, sorry u/imkrut. This was going for /u/ZXXII 's comment, who said it wouldn't be technically possible.
sadly no, starting part of the way through the ps4 repackage generation they removed backwards compatibility from that point on and most old games are run on console via emulator (if it’s even available).
Yeah, that was something I knew about, since nah, it didn't begin with the PS4. Sony did the same thing with the PS2 and PS3 as well, but as proof of their claim that "the vast majority of people wouldn't care about older games", indeed, most people didn't realize it.
The first models of the PS2 had full PS1 compatibility. On later ones, they removed a chunk of the included hardware to cut down costs, and emulated it (the "specific bit that was replaced", not the whole console), which led to somewhat wonky compatibility with some titles.
Same story with the PS3, although, if I'm not mistaken, that one used emulation from the get-go. First-gen consoles had a combination of hardware & emulation for PS2 and PS1 compatibility, later ones had less hardware & more emulation, and the last ones, IIRC, almost entirely ditched the hardware.
I don't recall the specifics, though.
My surprise and question weren't about the consoles and their compatibility with their "precursors", but about "their drive's tech" itself. As in, EVEN if the PS4 was incompatible with some or all of PS3's, PS2's, and PS1's library, I was under the impression that technically it would be compatible with the discs they used. As in, that if you wanted to watch a DVD movie or listen to a classic music album on CD, the PS4 and PS5 would be able "to play them", just like their precursors did for optical media that had come before them.
As others explained (and which I also knew about), yeah, drives for optical media use different wavelengths for their lasers, and CDs and DVDs rely on red lasers whereas blu-rays use a blue laser (hence the name). But although they're all "technically" incompatible, somehow all the drives I happened to use for optical media (up to around five years ago) were always compatible with "past formats", so, I took it for granted that all drives "were like that", and that all drive manufacturers would go the extra mile to include "the necessary bits and pieces" for such compatibility.
As others explained, though, it seems that what I considered "the norm" was actually the exception to the rule (at least, since the introduction of blu-ray drives, since up to DVDs, all DVD drives I'd used were fully compatible with CDs - and I used dozens of drives, juggling thousands of CDs and DVDs).
And Sony decided to "go cheapskate" and not include compatibility with CDs and DVDs for the PS4's and PS5's blu-ray drive.
Yup, I remember something along those lines, too. That's why people were seeking ancient "fat" PS3s, IIRC from the first two or three lines of production: they were "the most backwards-compatible", plus, they came with Linux support (later removed with a firmware update).
And that despite them being the most prone to failure - back in the day, it was said it was due to faulty memory chips or shoddy "connections" between the CPU, GPU, and motherboard, but if I'm not mistaken, later more causes were "unearthed" for those failures.
It’s not about tech it’s about licensing. CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, these are all owned by a company or a consortium of companies. To put a drive in something that can read CDs requires some of the revenue for every device you sell going to the license holder(s). If you’re making a device in 2025 that is already riding pretty slim on the profit margins you’re not going to waste a penny on technology that is virtually dead at this point.
It's about the optical and support systems needed. Blu-ray, DVD, and CD all use different wavelengths of light so they need separate laser components for each disc format. Blu-ray (in the blue to ultraviolet range of the spectrum) and CD (red close to infrared) are different enough that you also start having some added mechanical costs when you need more complex optics, better movement range for focusing, and more range for rotational motor control. Drives do exist that can read everything between CD discs, DVD discs, and UHD Blu-ray discs, but they have more material and component costs. DVDs and CDs both use "red"-coloured lasers, but they are different wavelengths of red.
Every component you add to a mechanical drive system can and will have an increased failure rate, and that is in addition to the additional components costs. Sony has thus far not been wanting to deal with that can of worms since they got burned by PS3 production (the last Sony game console to have a CD laser built in).
Ironically, since PS5 disc drives are now user upgradable and replaceable on newer PS5 console models, they have the ability to release a newer optical drive for multi-format backwards compatibility. I don't think they would though since it would be pouring R&D money to produce it, and in a business sense pouring money into a product that can reduce potential game sales is a tough pill to swallow.
And that changes the fact that Sony has to pay for licensing to play CDs... how?
It's exactly because of that reason that the Wii can't play DVD movies despite data mining showing that it was originally meant to, and the Xbox 360 can't either without an accessory (which is how they bypass the licensing, because instead they just pay the fee per accessory sold)
Xbox 360 plays DVDs natively. The original Xbox doesn't work without the DVD Kit. All Xboxes with a disc drive can play CDs without issue. Original Xbox and Xbox 360 can even rip cds to the HDD.
One|S|X and Series X plays blu-ray, cd's, and pass the S, 4k blu-rays.
Yeah, I know about that, but I (probably foolishly) thought that since (I'm guessing that paying such rights/licenses) would basically cost pennies for every console, Sony wouldn't act like cheapskates, especially with how they used to brag about how their older consoles (up to the PS3) could play the optical media that were popular at the time of release.
I mean, although the vast majority of people wouldn't care about playing two-decade-old titles on their brand-new console, the technical feasibility of compatibility with all previous PS consoles could allow Sony to brag (once more) that their latest and greatest "can play everything", and then slap a five-digit number of titles next to it.
Yeah, OK, that would also open potential doorways for (more) jailbreaks... but still...
I mean, there are only two companies with direct access to such vast catalogues of titles: Sony and Valve. And since Sony did use their back catalogues to promote their consoles up to the PS3, and Valve did do the same with the Steam Deck, and now the Steam Machine, I never even considered that the latest PlayStation wouldn't be compatible with the previous consoles not because of some other hardware quirk, not because Sony wouldn't want to invest in emulating their older platforms, but... because licensing for CD compatibility would cost a few pennies more per console?!?!
Seems pretty much like the Japan Studio take on the Patapon + Locoroco + Parappa collection for PSP on PS4, with 4K textures swapping on the fly. The emulator only really ran those four games (also Patapon 2) properly, with partial support for maybe 3-4 more games. It was as barebones as it got, not even 3D rendering.
In theory yes, but each game has its own SPU programs so it would be unfeasible to replace every SPU program from every game out there with HLE code. This is possible if you're targeting a single game like they did in the blog post, specially one that doesn't use the SPUs in weird ways.
The feasible thing, on a large scale, would be to HLE common libraries used by different games. We already have patches to disable SPU MLAA that work based on the SPU program's ID instead of looking for the game ID or the main executable hash, thus working for any game that loads the exact same SPU library.
I honestly feel like this is the only course at this point. Would have probably been cool if all the Fox Engine talent stuck around and they did it that way instead.
We're already seeing AI-assisted decomp/recomp projects take off in the N64 scene. It's entirely within the realm of possibility that we'll see something even more substantial than that in the near future.
PC is a larger market than console nowadays for many games so if that's what you're calling niche that's inaccurate. Agree with making games more generally available although given it's a small company instead of an open source community-driven emulator, my expectations are very low for these.
Atleast it's something. People who wanted to play rpcs3 have already played it that way. Dummies that can't do it might be able to play their ps3 games now.
You know the alternative is not having any upstream macOS builds. No one in the core team uses macOS, we decided to offer an upstream build so there could be an upstream version for macOS users and developers to contribute towards to. There are a few recurring macOS developers pulling a lot of weight for the builds to even continue existing - mainly nas, schm1dtmac, and shinra-electric.
As far as comments like that go, we can remove the macOS upstream build and you can replace your paperweight with an actual computer.
This is a really unprofessional response from a developer. Why is it always the RPCS3 dev team with an attitude problem? Remove a Mac upstream because you read a comment you didn't like. Telling them to get a new computer instead. Yeah sorry buddy, Macs are really impressive now. You said it yourself you don't use em. So you wouldn't know.
> Even when people on macOS provide you logs you do nothing
Glad it is clear we don't like macOS. The only developer in our team who even has mac hardware is kd-11, which he used for the arm64 port, and even he can't stand macOS and instead uses Asahi Linux on it.
The arm64 RPCS3 port was done using qemu on x64 PCs and Asahi Linux on an M1, with just a few hours spent at the end to ensure it also ran on macOS.
Again, the only reason we even have macOS builds up is because other contributors on macOS proposed to maintain them upstream. If it was only dependent on us, we would drop the macOS builds right now without a second thought.
You can contribute yourself; it's open source and you have a mac. Nobody said you had to use a build from a year ago, you can use a build you made today and use the logs to fix all of the issues you have.
See, I use the latest build and all the games I currently have installed work fine, including many of the AAA hard to run ones. You could experience this marvel of technology too if you ran RPCS3 on a real computer with a decent OS instead of insisting to run it on a paperweight.
Would be cool if the PS5 allowed you to run your ps3/ps2/ps1 disc games
The PS5 Disc Drive can’t read CDs so PS1 games aren’t technically possible.
PS2 and PS3 games are but it’s obviously never going to happen.
i believe some PS2 games also shipped on CDs, the ones that discs were blue. Agreed that it will never happen though since they want to be able to monetize them.
That's a firmware decision Sony made to hobble jailbreak vectors and excuse no classic BC. All BD drives can read CD and DVD, its literally part of the official specs. They can fix this at any time if they wanted to.
It's not simply a firmware limitation. CD discs require additional optical system components to read since laser diodes can only emit a single wavelength of light. DVDs, CDs, and Blu-ray discs all use different wavelengths.
They do, although a modded PS4 with Linux will read CDs, just barely.
Although yeah, the PS5 doesn't have an IR diode to properly read it, so while it could still maybe happen it would be alot slower than usual.
To my knowledge the CD was never used as an attack vector against the PS3, it was the USB where USB devices tricked the PS3 into think it was on a Sony test bench so it would boot into maintenance mode. After that you could just transfer files on off the PS3 through the network or USB.
No it’s a hardware limitation, has nothing to do with preventing exploits.
BD drives use a completely different kind of laser. Some BD drives exist that can read CD and DVD, but those have two different lasers inside to allow for this functionality.
Don't forget that a significant number of PS2 games were on CD media and not DVD-based media, especially for games released in the first few years of the console.
Wait, what?
I don't have a PS5 or PS4, but strictly talking about tech, I was under the impression that every new "optical media tech" was backwards compatible with the ones that came before.
EDIT: Doh! I've replied to the wrong person, sorry u/imkrut. This was going for /u/ZXXII 's comment, who said it wouldn't be technically possible.
sadly no, starting part of the way through the ps4 repackage generation they removed backwards compatibility from that point on and most old games are run on console via emulator (if it’s even available).
Yeah, that was something I knew about, since nah, it didn't begin with the PS4. Sony did the same thing with the PS2 and PS3 as well, but as proof of their claim that "the vast majority of people wouldn't care about older games", indeed, most people didn't realize it.
I don't recall the specifics, though.
My surprise and question weren't about the consoles and their compatibility with their "precursors", but about "their drive's tech" itself. As in, EVEN if the PS4 was incompatible with some or all of PS3's, PS2's, and PS1's library, I was under the impression that technically it would be compatible with the discs they used. As in, that if you wanted to watch a DVD movie or listen to a classic music album on CD, the PS4 and PS5 would be able "to play them", just like their precursors did for optical media that had come before them.
As others explained (and which I also knew about), yeah, drives for optical media use different wavelengths for their lasers, and CDs and DVDs rely on red lasers whereas blu-rays use a blue laser (hence the name). But although they're all "technically" incompatible, somehow all the drives I happened to use for optical media (up to around five years ago) were always compatible with "past formats", so, I took it for granted that all drives "were like that", and that all drive manufacturers would go the extra mile to include "the necessary bits and pieces" for such compatibility.
As others explained, though, it seems that what I considered "the norm" was actually the exception to the rule (at least, since the introduction of blu-ray drives, since up to DVDs, all DVD drives I'd used were fully compatible with CDs - and I used dozens of drives, juggling thousands of CDs and DVDs).
And Sony decided to "go cheapskate" and not include compatibility with CDs and DVDs for the PS4's and PS5's blu-ray drive.
I think the very first PS3s were as close to full hardware as you can get, then it quickly started dropping.
Yup, I remember something along those lines, too. That's why people were seeking ancient "fat" PS3s, IIRC from the first two or three lines of production: they were "the most backwards-compatible", plus, they came with Linux support (later removed with a firmware update).
And that despite them being the most prone to failure - back in the day, it was said it was due to faulty memory chips or shoddy "connections" between the CPU, GPU, and motherboard, but if I'm not mistaken, later more causes were "unearthed" for those failures.
It’s not about tech it’s about licensing. CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, these are all owned by a company or a consortium of companies. To put a drive in something that can read CDs requires some of the revenue for every device you sell going to the license holder(s). If you’re making a device in 2025 that is already riding pretty slim on the profit margins you’re not going to waste a penny on technology that is virtually dead at this point.
It's about the optical and support systems needed. Blu-ray, DVD, and CD all use different wavelengths of light so they need separate laser components for each disc format. Blu-ray (in the blue to ultraviolet range of the spectrum) and CD (red close to infrared) are different enough that you also start having some added mechanical costs when you need more complex optics, better movement range for focusing, and more range for rotational motor control. Drives do exist that can read everything between CD discs, DVD discs, and UHD Blu-ray discs, but they have more material and component costs. DVDs and CDs both use "red"-coloured lasers, but they are different wavelengths of red.
Every component you add to a mechanical drive system can and will have an increased failure rate, and that is in addition to the additional components costs. Sony has thus far not been wanting to deal with that can of worms since they got burned by PS3 production (the last Sony game console to have a CD laser built in).
Ironically, since PS5 disc drives are now user upgradable and replaceable on newer PS5 console models, they have the ability to release a newer optical drive for multi-format backwards compatibility. I don't think they would though since it would be pouring R&D money to produce it, and in a business sense pouring money into a product that can reduce potential game sales is a tough pill to swallow.
Licensing? CDs are 40-year-old tech. Any patents should be long expired.
Tell that to the x86 license holders...
x86 is still constantly being updated. If you want to clone the 386 no one's gonna stop you, but if you want AVX then that's a different story.
Most of the time with consortium licensing, you aren't licensing the patent so much as the conformity and the branding.
you know sony is the primary company that developed and pushed blu ray right?
And DVD. and CD...
And that changes the fact that Sony has to pay for licensing to play CDs... how?
It's exactly because of that reason that the Wii can't play DVD movies despite data mining showing that it was originally meant to, and the Xbox 360 can't either without an accessory (which is how they bypass the licensing, because instead they just pay the fee per accessory sold)
Xbox 360 plays DVDs natively. The original Xbox doesn't work without the DVD Kit. All Xboxes with a disc drive can play CDs without issue. Original Xbox and Xbox 360 can even rip cds to the HDD.
One|S|X and Series X plays blu-ray, cd's, and pass the S, 4k blu-rays.
My bad, I confused the original Xbox and the Xbox 360, oops
Yeah, I know about that, but I (probably foolishly) thought that since (I'm guessing that paying such rights/licenses) would basically cost pennies for every console, Sony wouldn't act like cheapskates, especially with how they used to brag about how their older consoles (up to the PS3) could play the optical media that were popular at the time of release.
I mean, although the vast majority of people wouldn't care about playing two-decade-old titles on their brand-new console, the technical feasibility of compatibility with all previous PS consoles could allow Sony to brag (once more) that their latest and greatest "can play everything", and then slap a five-digit number of titles next to it.
Yeah, OK, that would also open potential doorways for (more) jailbreaks... but still...
I mean, there are only two companies with direct access to such vast catalogues of titles: Sony and Valve. And since Sony did use their back catalogues to promote their consoles up to the PS3, and Valve did do the same with the Steam Deck, and now the Steam Machine, I never even considered that the latest PlayStation wouldn't be compatible with the previous consoles not because of some other hardware quirk, not because Sony wouldn't want to invest in emulating their older platforms, but... because licensing for CD compatibility would cost a few pennies more per console?!?!
They are, Sony specifically killed compatibility at a firmware level.
It would! I know this is such a niche thing, but I have a few backlog games on PS1, 2 & 3. Would be nice to just have one machine to play them all.
That's why I loved my launch PS3.
RIP... YLOD
Fun fact, Jean-Philip Desjardins (jpd002) of RedoApps is the main person behind the PS2 emulator Play!
Worst emulator name in the history of emulators.
I’ve seen jpd in changelogs/commits, L E G E N D.
Seems pretty much like the Japan Studio take on the Patapon + Locoroco + Parappa collection for PSP on PS4, with 4K textures swapping on the fly. The emulator only really ran those four games (also Patapon 2) properly, with partial support for maybe 3-4 more games. It was as barebones as it got, not even 3D rendering.
Pata pata pata pon
You’ll be hearing it the rest of the night
HLE SPU? Could RPCS3 do that?
In theory yes, but each game has its own SPU programs so it would be unfeasible to replace every SPU program from every game out there with HLE code. This is possible if you're targeting a single game like they did in the blog post, specially one that doesn't use the SPUs in weird ways.
The feasible thing, on a large scale, would be to HLE common libraries used by different games. We already have patches to disable SPU MLAA that work based on the SPU program's ID instead of looking for the game ID or the main executable hash, thus working for any game that loads the exact same SPU library.
I am impressed that it’s just two people??
Really sucks that my PS3 has been repaired twice and will freeze after about 3 minutes. I still have my 1980s Nintendo and it works better than that.
I've had mine since 2013, it was a second-hand gift from a friend, and I'm still playing Tales of Vesperia on it right now :D
Metal Gear Solid IV finally not exclusive any longer?
I don't know if the talent exists to port it to another platform. Those dudes have probably retired wealthy from their Nvidia stock already.
I don't know why, but based on their comments, I have an inkling they're going to remake the game using UE5.
I honestly feel like this is the only course at this point. Would have probably been cool if all the Fox Engine talent stuck around and they did it that way instead.
Not possible in a hundred for this approach (and this team size).
"In a hundred years"?
We're already seeing AI-assisted decomp/recomp projects take off in the N64 scene. It's entirely within the realm of possibility that we'll see something even more substantial than that in the near future.
Cool now read the second half of the comment you're replying to.
BS
Any idiot can comment "BS", but it takes actual effort to know whether something is or is not BS.
This is not BS. Static recompilation is a thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywWwUuWRgsM
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A PC is not the same as a console.
This is a good thing as it allows people to play PS3 games outside of a niche market.
PC is a larger market than console nowadays for many games so if that's what you're calling niche that's inaccurate. Agree with making games more generally available although given it's a small company instead of an open source community-driven emulator, my expectations are very low for these.
Atleast it's something. People who wanted to play rpcs3 have already played it that way. Dummies that can't do it might be able to play their ps3 games now.
It's not about being stupid, RPCS3 isn't really accessible to the majority of players as it requires a fairly powerful PC and emulation knowledge.
True, I guess I meant less tech literate people or something. Can't wait for ps5 ps3 emulation though!
We need something better for macOS than the broken mess that is RPCS3 - I’ve never seen a project with so much bug regression
The PS3 is (one of) the most difficult system to emulate due to its complex architecture. The fact that they managed to get this far is a miracle.
You know the alternative is not having any upstream macOS builds. No one in the core team uses macOS, we decided to offer an upstream build so there could be an upstream version for macOS users and developers to contribute towards to. There are a few recurring macOS developers pulling a lot of weight for the builds to even continue existing - mainly nas, schm1dtmac, and shinra-electric.
As far as comments like that go, we can remove the macOS upstream build and you can replace your paperweight with an actual computer.
This is a really unprofessional response from a developer. Why is it always the RPCS3 dev team with an attitude problem? Remove a Mac upstream because you read a comment you didn't like. Telling them to get a new computer instead. Yeah sorry buddy, Macs are really impressive now. You said it yourself you don't use em. So you wouldn't know.
he didn't say that lmao
Good thing RPCS3 is free and they don't need to give a fuck.
Not a good thing that the devs of it have an attitude problem.
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> No one in the core team uses macOS
> Even when people on macOS provide you logs you do nothing
Glad it is clear we don't like macOS. The only developer in our team who even has mac hardware is kd-11, which he used for the arm64 port, and even he can't stand macOS and instead uses Asahi Linux on it.
The arm64 RPCS3 port was done using qemu on x64 PCs and Asahi Linux on an M1, with just a few hours spent at the end to ensure it also ran on macOS.
Again, the only reason we even have macOS builds up is because other contributors on macOS proposed to maintain them upstream. If it was only dependent on us, we would drop the macOS builds right now without a second thought.
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You can contribute yourself; it's open source and you have a mac. Nobody said you had to use a build from a year ago, you can use a build you made today and use the logs to fix all of the issues you have.
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"Man, he fixed the macOS builds, what will we do with our lives now without all of the macOS complaints"
See, I use the latest build and all the games I currently have installed work fine, including many of the AAA hard to run ones. You could experience this marvel of technology too if you ran RPCS3 on a real computer with a decent OS instead of insisting to run it on a paperweight.
I love my Mac to death, but I also recognize that, hey, this is a pain in the ass to do weird things with, and emulation is absolutely a weird thing.
That's why I have a gaming PC, honestly.
Thanks for the work y'all are putting in!
If you’re going to act like that, you can do so elsewhere.
The only emulation users more annoying than Android users are Mac users.
Better way would be to ditch macos. It's really shit for any kind of gaming. Even native releases run like shit.
100% agree each update gets more broken decided to ignore the whole system
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So its not the developers fault releasing unusable software? And i should learn coding too? Stfu bro
Releasing code for free.
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