PS3 emulation has been hit-and-miss for a while now with RPCS3 being the main go-to emulator and the only one that we've seen regular improvements to. If we're being honest, it's the only one that actually works. It has a large library of games and runs incredibly well with most titles, but as it's made for Windows, it doesn't really help Android users looking to get their PS3 kicks on the go.
Well, a PS3 emulator has now arrived on Android called aPS3e, and it's seemingly come out of nowhere. According to Android Authority, the emulator is in early development and removes the need to use a Winlator tool to get RSPC3 working on Android devices. The only thing that's known about the emulator is that it comes from a developer in China called Aenu; it's unsure how safe it is currently and the title compatibility is pretty low. Oddly, the code has already been removed from GitHub and is only available from a Chinese host, so currently it's not something that I would feel comfortable recommending that Retro Dodo readers go and try out for themselves.
Still, the fact that a PS3 emulator has been shown running on devices with Android 7 is a good step in the right direction and shows that work is being done to get PS3 games running on other devices. There's still a long way to go with simple things like controller support yet to be added and the list of games is reportedly limited to less demanding games like Terraria, but perhaps this will inspire other developers to put their brains to the challenge and help to get things moving.
In other PS3 emulation news, I recently reported that RPCS3 now works on Raspberry Pi 5 and other Arm64 devices including Apple Macs with an M1 chip. Again, there's a long way to go with visuals looking more like the PSP than the PS3, but it's a great start!
