Over the past few weeks, we have seen rapid progress in console homebrew and emulation projects, leading to some previously unthinkable developments, including Nintendo Switch 2 games like Mario Kart World and Pokémon Pokopia being ported to the original Nintendo Switch with surprisingly decent performance. Today, something similar has happened with the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, as God of War: Sons of Sparta is reportedly running at 40 FPS on the Pro model via EmuFive, a PS5 emulator for its predecessor.
This experimental emulator built on PS4 Multiboot, which requires a jailbroken system, is based on the KytyPS5 emulator, which rewrites PS5-only CPU instructions into game code. The aforementioned God of War: Sons of Sparta is among the games tested, achieving a respectable 40 FPS framerate on PlayStation 4 Pro. The PS5 version of Hollow Knight: Silksong is unsurprisingly also running, while other games are still being tested, but their performance has not been disclosed.
Seeing the latest entry in the God of War series run at 40 FPS on PlayStation 4 Pro doesn’t fool you into thinking that other PlayStation 5 games will run at playable framerates, due to CPU issues. While KytyPS5 has been patched so that the AVX2, FMA, or BMI2 instructions the PlayStation 4JaguarCPU lacks are replaced by code with the same effect, no amount of programming wizardry can compensate for the massive difference in speed with the PlayStation 5Zen 2CPU, so if any complex 3D game gets to run on the PlayStation 4, it will likely do so at unplayable framerates.
As we are used to backward compatibility rather than an impossible forward compatibility in the console space, EmuFive remains an incredibly interesting project, regardless of how the PlayStation 4 handles emulated PlayStation 5 games. We likely won’t see any major 3D game run well on it, but with development in gaming and emulation projects supercharged by AI, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see a standout emulated game push the boundaries of what was previously thought impossible.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack.
After joining the Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi “Suda51” Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA’s president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3.
When he’s not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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