Do you reminisce about games like The Last of Us, God of War III or Uncharted 2? An ad-free PS3 emulator for Android, called aPS3e, is now available on the Google Play Store.

The good news is it’s free, though there’s a $5 paid version if you’d like to support the developer, which doesn’t give you any extra features.

The bad news: it’s pretty unlikely you’ll be able to revisit your PS3 favorites on a five-year-old Android smartphone. You’ll need to meet sky-high performance requirements to run the most popular PS3 games, well out of reach for average smartphone users.

The developer recommends an absolute bare minimum of 6GB of RAM, with 8GB recommended. You’ll also need to be running Android 7 and up and have a high-end chip like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+. So, there’s a good chance you’ll need a relatively high-end device like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra or the gaming-focused Asus ROG Phone 9 to get it to work optimally. 

Users on Reddit are also reporting slow load times and plenty of bugs, though that’s fairly understandable given how ambitious the project is. Previous interviews with developers from the project have noted how the PS3’s unique software architecture has made emulation, particularly on Android, a difficult task.  But these requirements don’t seem to be putting off gamers, it has clocked up over 50,000 downloads since launching just a few days ago. 

Enthusiasts have been releasing PS3 emulators since the early 2010s, though this is the first time something like this has appeared for smartphones. The app comes from a little-known Chinese developer called Aenu and is based on the RPCS3 source code, originally developed for the most popular PS3 emulator for desktop computers.

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About Will McCurdy

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I’m a reporter covering weekend news. Before joining PCMag in 2024, I picked up bylines in BBC News, The Guardian, The Times of London, The Daily Beast, Vice, Slate, Fast Company, The Evening Standard, The i, TechRadar, and Decrypt Media.

I’ve been a PC gamer since you had to install games from multiple CD-ROMs by hand. As a reporter, I’m passionate about the intersection of tech and human lives. I’ve covered everything from crypto scandals to the art world, as well as conspiracy theories, UK politics, and Russia and foreign affairs.

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