The last few years have been quite tumultuous for those of us who enjoy game emulating on Android. Last year, Nintendo went after the two biggest players in Switch emulation, with the original creators of Ryujinx and Yuzu being forced to halt development. However, after the waters calmed a bit, development has picked up a bit, albeit at a slower pace.
On the flip side, we have Sony, a company that seems perfectly content with emulator development for its consoles. In fact, the problems surrounding the emulation of Sony consoles have stemmed from developers and the community. For instance, in early 2023, the development of AetherSX2 was “suspended indefinitely” after the developer stated they’d experienced “neverending impersonating, complaints, demands, and now death threats.”
So while Switch emulator development has started to ramp back up a bit, the same couldn’t be said about Sony’s consoles. For quite some time, there was hope in the community that RPCS3 would release its PS3 emulator on Android.
However, those hopes were dashed in December 2024, when RPCS3 for arm64 was released. In the announcement blog post, there’s an entire section dedicated to “other mobile platforms.” Specifically in regards to Android, the blog post says “We have no intention of porting RPCS3 to these platforms at this time.” And as for the reason? “We are aware it comes with its own disadvantages, such as having to deal with toxic users that have harassed other emulator developers in the past, like the brilliant developers behind AetherSX2.”
So yeah, RPCS3 pulled no punches and went with a “we can’t have nice things because of you” approach.
At the time, there would be rumblings of someone managing to get a PS3 emulator running on Android. Occasionally, the news would spread like wildfire, only for the original post to be deleted from Reddit, or for someone else to point out that it’s just video playback. That is, until fairly recently.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, and yet again, news of a PS3 emulator on Android spread like wildfire. The emulator, known as aPS3e, was readily available for download; many emulation enthusiasts clicked and sideloaded everything as fast as they could. People began posting their results (and issues) on Reddit, and it wasn’t long before a familiar face joined the fray.
Jarrod Norwell, the developer of one of the surviving Switch emulators, in addition to a multi-system emulator on iOS, discovered that aPS3e wasn’t what it claimed to be. Instead of aPS3e running the same way that other Android apps do, it was essentially RPCS3 running via Termux, a Linux terminal and environment emulator for Android.
Adding fuel to the fire, it turned out that aPS3e was using code from both Vita3K and RPCS3, which would normally be fine. However, the developer released the app under the GPLv2 license, didn’t provide the entire source code, and when asked to do so, said it would do so after users paid $5,000, before reducing the demand to $2,000.
One member of the RPCS3 team raised an issue on the aPS3e GitHub, making “a formal request for you to comply with the GPLv2 license.” After ignoring the complaints for a few hours, aPS3e and the developer’s GitHub account were completely removed — only for it to reappear on a completely different website, while both a subreddit and Discord channel were created.
Circling back to Norwell, shortly after they shared their findings, a new GitHub repo appeared on Norwell’s account. The aptly named “rpcs3droid” is described as an “attempt at running RPCS3 on Android natively via Android Studio.” Due to the open-source nature of RPCS3, Norwell is relying on the base code to get started. However, Norwell shared that this will be more of a side-project than anything else.
While this was not the conclusion that we would’ve hoped for, another new PS3 emulator GitHub repo was discovered from an unlikely source that offered new hope. The project is named “RPCS3-Android,” and comes from a developer simply known as “DH.”
Why does this matter? Well, DH was one of the original developers for RPCS3, before leaving to begin work on RPCSX, a PS4 emulator. Now, it seems that DH wants to see if they can get RPCS3 working on Android.
The RPCS3-Android sat dormant for a few days, until a flurry of pull requests and updates resulted in the first RPCS3 for Android Alpha build.
Before you get too excited, you won’t actually be able to get any games to load. Instead, this build is more about laying the foundation and ensuring that the app is even able to run.
In the time that all of this was happening, various comments and posts were being made by the developer of aPS3e. Before removing the project from GitHub, aPS3e v0.5 was released, giving everyone the opportunity to tinker around with something new and shiny. There’s also a newer v0.7 build floating around, but it’s not readily available.
That being said, over on the developer’s website, you’ll see a statement that says “aPS3e will enter a closed testing phase.” In order to participate, you’ll have to sign up through either Reddit or Discord; however, there aren’t actually any clear links to join the beta test, so we assume you’ll just have to message one of the mods.
I wish I could say that we’re on the brink of something incredible, and maybe we are. However, in its current iteration, aPS3e is not the “savior” of PS3 emulation on Android that we hoped for. It’s still essentially the Linux build of RPCS3 wrapped in Termux and isn’t running natively.
That’s not to say all hope is lost, as the saga has piqued the interest of at least two prominent developers in the Android space. All we can do now is wait, and hope that bad apples in the community don’t end up spoiling the fun for everyone else. Let the developers try and work their magic, and hopefully, this will quickly be forgotten. Patience is key.