There’s a wealth of PlayStation 3 exclusive games that remain locked to the system – console-exclusive titles that sold millions of copies in their day that are no longer playable natively on modern systems. Sony itself has a system in place to make them accessible at least – the streaming-based PlayStation Now – but what you’re looking at are compromised versions of the original experience, marred with image quality and latency problems. However, there is a route forward, albeit to a limited audience. The open source RPCS3 emulator allows PC users to access the PlayStation 3 library, and I’ve been playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots at 4K resolution at 60fps, with 16x anisotropic filtering. It’s a remarkable showcase of what could be, whether it is via local emulation on a PlayStation console, or via a Bluepoint-class remaster.
At Digital Foundry, we always desire the highest possible frame-rates with new game releases but also understand this isn’t always possible, but Metal Gear Solid 4 is an interesting case as it’s a game that teased us with the possibility of 60 frames per second only to stomp on our dreams with its eventual release. Flash back to the Tokyo Game Show in 2005 and we saw a game trailer running flat out at 60 frames per second – a far cry from the final release, that mostly operated in a 20-30fps window. The game did run unlocked, however, so there were sparing sections where 60fps was possible – a teaser of the game it was supposed to be.
This trailer was produced prior to receiving actual PS3 development hardware. It was likely built on a powerful PC and even then, it may well have been pre-rendered given the perfect frame-rate. While I have no insight into Kojima Productions development situation, I have spoken with other developers that were involved with the early days of PS3 and all of them have suggested that the final hardware was a stepdown from what was promised. So, bringing visuals of this calibre to the PlayStation 3 would be no small task.
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