I tried Aps3e to imitate PS3 games on Android and I’m not yet convinced

The time for PS3 emulation on Android is here! To some extent, at least.

Android Emulation Geeks is overwhelming with excitement over Aps3e, the first native PS3 emulator for Android phones. Sure, most of the code appears to be cobbled from Open Source PS3 emulating projects such as RPCS3, Vita3K and Termux (probably breaks their licenses), but the fact that it works at all is a big step forward.

The app itself has been now removed from GitHub because of this controversy but you can still download it from This Chinese host. Obviously, This allows for a certain risk of harmful software, so do it at your own risk.

So how well the emulator actually works? That’s what I’ve tested for the last 48 hours, and the results are mixed.

Anyone who has tinked with Emulators on Android Before, things rarely work out of the box. You often need to adjust settings and drivers to get the best performance, and often things will still not work, despite your best bet. This is especially true of the emulation frontier, which includes Nintendo Switch and now PlayStation 3.

In a way, Aps3e things make it easier because it has no settings. The app is so new and so barbons that there is no settings menu at all. If a game works, it works; If it doesn’t, don’t. It’s almost a welcome change if you’re used to setting up Winlator containers.

However, there was a small trick required to make most games work. While it can load both ISO and PKG files, they must be affiliated. The rap files are moved manually to APS3E/CONFIG/DEV_HDD0/HOME/000000001/EXDATA catalog. Only one game came to the installation screen without it, and I can’t tell you why for my life.

If a game manages to load, it will take a few minutes to install the first time you drive it. Most of the games I tested could not past this phase. Sometimes they would work with a second or third attempt, but more often than did not end the journey there.

I tested the Aps3e emulator on Snapdragon 8 elite driven Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro, and my colleague Hadlee tested it on Galaxy S23 Ultra (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2) and another Snapdragon 8 elite device. I tried to test it at Ayaneo Pocket Evo Gaming handheldBut so few games worked with niche Snapdragon G3x Gen 2 chipset that is not worth mentioning.

Over the past few days, we have tried over a dozen matches, and only a handful have managed to launch. Some immediately crashed the app when they were added to the library, some installed, but crashed when we tried to play them, and a few were playable in different degrees.

Here is a quick overview of the games we tested and how they performed:

• 3D Dot Game Heroes: Installed, good performance
• Birds of steel: Failed to install
• Catherine: Failed to install
• Dark souls: Installed but crashed at launch
• Dark Souls 2: Installed but crashed at launch
• Dead or alive 5: Launched in games, choppy performance
• DISGAEA D2: Failed to install
• Dragon’s Crown: Launched in games, good performance
• Catamari forever: Failed to install
• Little Big Planet: Failed to install
• Little Big Plan 2: Installed but crashed at launch
• Modnation Racers: Installed but crashed at launch
• Ratchet & Clank – a crack in time: Failed to install
• Rayman Origins: Launched in games, good performance
• Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection: Installed but crashed at launch
• UFC 2009 undisputed: Failed to install
• Wipeout HD Fury: Failed to install

As you can see, there were only four of the 17 matches we tried were playable, even though they are dead or alive 5 barely tapped. Light games like 3D Dot Game Heroes and 2D games like Rayman Origins appear to be the best option, although other 2D games failed to install at all. Even then, the lack of control support means that you want to fight with touch checks.

Since most of the games were tested on Snapdragon 8 elite devices, it is worth pointing out that your results can vary. Drivers are optimized over the life of a piece, so chips that are three or four years old can work better than groundbreaking silicon. That being said, for demanding activities such as PS3 emulation, the extra power goes far.

Overall, it is most impressive here that these games are launched at all. Previous efforts required Windows or Linux containers, which provide a further burden on performance. Since APS3E is optimized, it should quickly exceed other efforts.

And it’s really rubbing. Will this emulator continue to be optimized? The developer does not have much of a track record, and considering that they have already tried to earn a quick dollar by asking for $ 5,000 (later $ 2000) in donations to publish the source code that is already supposed to be open source code No guarantee it will continue to improve at all.

Perhaps the best outcome is that it inspires other developers to follow suit. Now that the barrier is broken, it is paved the way for several projects to rework RPCS3’s Arm64 Binary for Android, as the RPCS3 developers themselves refuse to do. In fact, the developer of the Nintendo Switch emulator Sudachi is already inspired to work with a legitimate port called rpcs3droidwhich is worth watching.

Anyway, I would not recommend spending a significant time trying to play games with the Aps3e PS3 emulator on Android for now. It still needs a lot more time in the oven.