Not An Emulator: Open-Source Project Aims To Port Every PS5 Game To PC

The line between personal computers and games consoles has become more and more blurred over the years, courtesy of technological advancement, hardware changes, and of course, PC emulation software for games consoles and ports of games. One project shared by GitHub user Boykopovar aims to bridge that gap even further by bringing every PS5 game to your PC.

AnyPS5 promises to port PS5 games to Linux or Windows using automatic executables, without relying on emulation. The tool uses a relinker which converts executables so that they're compatible with your operating system, enabling the games to run natively, alongside system PRX libraries. Part of why this works is because the PS5 already runs using hardware that's similar to PCs. The project is still currently in its early stages, at a release version of v0.1.1. In its disclaimer, it clarifies that AnyPS5's intention is for "interoperability, research, preservation, and compatibility purposes", clarifying that it doesn't require or use any copyrighted materials to run.

At the time of writing, the only tested and compatible game is Asteristic Game Studio's "Dreaming Sarah". According to the project's GitHub documentation, the 2D platformer is playable at 60 frames per second (FPS) with GTX 1050 Ti, i5-7500 3.4GHz, or 36 FPS with Intel HD Graphics 620, i5-7200 2.5GHz. The system also supports SDL-mapped game controllers, meaning you can hook up a PS5 DualSense controller if you want to, alongside keyboard and mouse control mapping.

At face value, porting and emulation certainly seems similar; after all, they both allow you to run games on different systems. On a technical level, they actually work quite differently. As you might know, emulators are a type of software that allow one computer or operating system to imitate another, allowing you to use other tools or software you wouldn't usually be able to run on your device. One example of this is using your computer or mobile device to emulate a gaming console so you can play a game designed for a different system on it using a ROM file. So, if you emulated a PlayStation 1 on your computer, you would then be able to play ROMs of PS1 games you already own on that machine.

Emulation and ROMs aren't the only way of playing console games on a different device from the one it was originally intended for. Another option is playing a port of a game. When a game is ported, it means it's directly adapted for a new system — like when "Batman: Arkham Knight" was ported to PC, albeit fairly unsuccessfully. Although there are plenty of official games ports out there, developed by full games studios, a large number of ports are also community-made fan projects. That's the case for the AnyPS5 project, but it's also unique in that it could eventually bring the entire PS5 library to PCs that have enough power.