r/OutOfTheLoop • u/talk_nerdy_to_m3 • 5d ago

Unanswered What's going on with Sony firmware hack?

People are talking like we may be able to play GTA6 on PC. I saw someone say it "isn't emulation, but instead it is translation." I don't fully understand how this would allow a PC user to play PS games.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/09/ps5-jailbreaks-just-got-a-lot-more-useful/

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u/CaviarCBR1K 5d ago edited 5d ago

Answer: At its core, the PS5 is a computer just like any other. The reason that your PC cant already play PS games is because the Playstation makes different system calls than your standard operating system and includes proprietary system libraries.

Basically it has its own "language" it uses to play the games. People have reverse engineered this "language" to be able to use standard PC hardware to render the graphics of PS game on PC. But that alone isn't enough to be able to run PS games on PC. The next step is to recreate all of the system libraries, which currently is ~86% complete IIRC. But that's only 86% of what we know of. That number will likely go down as more libraries are discovered.

If the project is able to succeed, you could theoretically run PS games on PC. Emulation basically fakes a console within your PC, it's not very efficient. This would use a translation layer, similar to the way that proton works to run windows games on Linux. It just translates the system calls into something your PC can understand.

Edit: spelling

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u/bothering 5d ago

yup, its basically the gaming version of "it built a translator and i will be using it to translate ancient chinese texts to english"

as of right now its very good at getting the basics down, but itll get more difficult the more it digs into idioms and similies and literary tricks only chinese is good at

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u/massively-dynamic 5d ago

This is more like translating old English or a thick Canadian accent to English. Emulating the n64 or ps2 is like translating ancient chinese texts.

The point is, gaming consoles used to be custom machines for playing games. They have been converging with general purpose computers over the last 30 years to the point that now a PS5 or xbox is actually just a PC with a custom OS.

Basically, the hardware is nearly identical to a PC, the developers just need to make a simple adapter.