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Fans should lower their expectations regarding Sony’s new game preservation team, at least for now. News that a dedicated team had been formed to archive games had some guessing that it would be working on PS3 emulation on PS5. However, Senior Build Engineer Garrett Fredley, who broke the news about the preservation team, clarified that he wasn’t currently working on emulation and that his work was focused on archival only.
Will the PlayStation game preservation team work on a PS3 emulator for PS5?
TBD on whether I’ll have much of a role to play personally in any emulation work, although I’ll share what I can if it comes up. It’s only my second day 😅
— Garrett Fredley (@SomeCronzaGuy) April 26, 2022
Right now, it doesn’t seem like Sony’s game preservation team is actively working on a PS3 emulator for PS5. That doesn’t mean that a project to emulate PS3 games on PS5 isn’t in the works, though. Fans were remiss to beleive the team would have anything to do with emulation since that’s only a (crucial) part of game preservation efforts.
When a company wants to archive a game, it goes beyond just keeping a ROM or an ISO on a server. Various builds, including alphas, betas, release candidates, and updates, must be documented and stored. Uncompiled assets and documentation also have to be cataloged. Depending on the game, this can be a grueling process that requires archivists to sift through tons of data. However, the end result will be a well-organized overview of the game’s development along with the source code at various stages that makes it significantly easier to port it to another system or emulate it.
So, even though the preservation team might not be developing a way to emulate PS3 games on PS5, its archival work will help any efforts to do so.
In other news, PlayStation Plus Premium is being given to existing PS Plus and PS Now members, and PS Now is losing 56 games before the prelaunch of the service as part of PS Plus.