The cross-media bar, or XMB, might be the best console user interface ever. It made the PSP and PlayStation 3 a joy to interact with, and now you can finally relive the magic on a modern machine. Popular PS3 emulator RPCS3 now supports the XMB – at least in part. While much of the front-end’s functionality is not yet implemented, the devs describe this as a “major breakthrough” for PS3 emulation.
“After years of hard work from several developers, we’re excited to announce that the VirtualShell/XrossMediaBar (VSH/XMB) now boots in the master build while using the latest PS3 firmware version,” developer AnnieLeo explains on Reddit. “While you cannot launch games from within the VSH/XMB just yet, this is a major breakthrough in PS3 emulation.”
You can see all that functionality broken down in the video below, but you’ll notice some major features missing – like the ability to launch games, for example. But this is a big deal for the emulation scene because it means RPCS3 is now properly replicating more low-level system functions than are usually required for most games.
“VSH uses a lot of low-level parts of the OS that games don’t need to work,” as AnnieLeo explains. It “required a lot of work to reverse engineer and implement them all, plus figure out other quirks specific to the VSH process such as differences in memory utilisation.”
For more old games, you can follow that link.
{“schema”:{“page”:{“content”:{“headline”:”PS3 emulator RPCS3 now boots the XMB”,”type”:”news”,”category”:”emulation”},”user”:{“loginstatus”:false},”game”:{“publisher”:””,”genre”:””,”title”:”Emulation”,”genres”:[]}}}}