I never had a PS3 back in the day. I have a PS5 now, and when I was looking at the PS+ packages, I was fascinated by the fact that all the PS3 games have to be streamed. And what’s more, relatively few PS3 games are even on the service. I didn’t realize that the PS3 was such a unique/powerful console, that it still apparently can’t be properly emulated even on a PS5.

I am interested in playing Final Fantasy 13, the Killzone series, Resistance Fall of Man, among others. Looks like a PS3 can be had for about $120 at my local game store.

Do others still have and use their PS3? Does it still connect/interface to Sony’s online service? Like can I still get trophies that connect with my PS account, buy DLC, etc? Or is all that shut down?

I do have an Xbox Series X, so I could play FF13 on there, but none of the other games.

(Hopefully this kind of post is ok here, I know it’s not gaming news, but just trying to not sit and lurk, but actually create discussion)

  •  System   ( @Cyzor@feddit.de ) 
    3•1 year ago

    From an architectural design standpoint, the PS3 is kind of fascinating. It’s impressive how good many of its games still look today.

    Rodrigo Copetti:

    As you can imagine, while the multi-core design of Cell accelerates emerging techniques such as procedural generation, none of these designs are particularly simple to implement, especially considering game studios prefer codebases that can be shared across different platforms. […]

    It appears that even with a supercomputer chip, Sony still had to fetch a GPU to finalise the PlayStation 3. This makes you wonder if IBM/Sony/Toshiba hit a wall while trying to scale Cell further, so Sony had no option but to get help from a graphics company.

    https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/playstation-3/

    •  circuitfarmer   ( @circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org ) 
      3•1 year ago

      It was a fascinating system. But that sharing of codebase was apparent. Oftentimes, games that were on both 360 and PS3 ran significantly better on the former. It seemed to be a case of very, very underutilized hardware on the PS3 side.

      Some games like Killzone really showed off what the console was capable of. It’s just a shame that it got effectively held back by market conditions.