Forum: gaming.stackexchange.com
Tags: <emulation>
Title: Is it possible to emulate an Xbox 360 or PS3?
Question: I'm a guy that only plays on PC, but there are some really decent games on Xbox 360 and PS3, that are made exclusively for these platforms.  I was wondering if it's possible to emulate consoles of that generation on a PC? If so, what software would I use? What are the hardware requirements?

Answers:
sents: text: Addressing the Wii part of the question.
text: As previous answers showed, there are 2 factors in consideration when emulating:
text: the hardware present at the console and the software present at your PC.
text: A Wii has the following specs (taken from Wikipedia ): CPU: IBM PowerPC "Broadway" (Single-Core @ 729MHz) Graphics: ATI "Hollywood" (@ 243 MHz) As you can see, in terms of processing power, a modern PC clearly surpasses a Wii.
text: Hence, it is possible to emulate Wii on a PC.
text: But this just opens the possibility.
text: In order for this to become a reality, one needs to write specific software.
text: Why?
text: The reasons are too complex to discuss at Arqade but short story the hardware of both console and PC don't talk the same language, and the emulator ends up being a translator program between your PC and the software made for Wii.
text: The complexity of such program increases as the complexity of the console increases.
text: As the Wii is comparatively simpler than the XBox or the PS3 systems, there exists some emulators for it.
text: XBox and PS3, however, are slightly more complex systems.
text: The XBox in particular is based around a standard PC.
text: Microsoft however made several modifications to the underlying systems and issued custom hardware.
text: This, coupled with the difficulty of reverse-engineering all the processes involved and translating them to a PC, makes the existing XBox emulators more of experiments.
text: The reasoning I use here for the original XBox can be expanded to XBox 360 or the PS3.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/54659/Doktoro Reichard
score: 8
sents: text: As of yet, there is no PS3 or Xbox 360 emulator that can run games.
text: The things you find online are either a hoax, viruses or scam, so do yourself a favour and don't download any of these programs (especially if they are linked in a youtube video).
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/49182/5pike
score: 6
sents: text: There are Xbox 360 and PS3 emulators in development currently: Xbox 360 Emulator Project - GitHub PS3 Emulator Project -
text: GitHub PS3 and XBox
text: 360 emulation is tough but not impossible.
text: The two emulators are very much 'work in progress' but soon they will run some games (the Xbox 360 project is further along).
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/67924/aniruddh saxena
score: 6
sents: text: Emulating a PS3 is a difficult task because it's main processor, Cell, resembles a modern GPU more than a regular CPU.
text: There are several slices of RAM which are only accessible by their respective cores and the main overwatch core, which also communicates between peripherals and the GPU.
text: This contrasts with normal PC processors where cores access the same memory and (with some considerations) are completely transparent to any executable code.
text: From there emerges the problem that PS3's code cannot be just translated on the spot automatically, meaning that whole processor has to be simulated .
text: In addition to this, some games on the PS3 use output from its GPU for other computations, so that part of the console would have to work like a real thing as well , which just deepens the issue.
text: This could potentially be solved with a GPGPU approach, given that the hardware has sufficient space to store a shader which works just as Cell's core does.
text: As of now, the emulator is mostly proof-of-concept.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/68403/transistor09
score: 2
sents: text: I agree with @5pike`s answer but want to make a small addition.
text: First, why this happens.
text: Even today Xbox 360 and PS3 are pretty decent pieces of hardware.
text: To emulate those one will need insanely powerful PC and people willing to dig into those propietary consoles and write complex emulation software (both consoles have unique gaming-oriented hardware).
text: But not all is lost, actually.
text: It`s not
text: that
text: just you want to play those games, MS and Sony want you to play them too (and pay for them)!
text: So the work is in progress and the first actual solution from Sony was already announced: Playstation Now .
text: It`s
text: a streaming service that allows to play PS3 (and some other) games on different devices.
text: That does not include PC yet, but Eventually the service will expand beyond PlayStation platforms and Sony devices, allowing you to stream PlayStation games across a broad range of Internet-connected devices.
text: So my take on the question is the following: as long as Xbox360 and PS3 remain worthwhile platforms, our best bet for playing their exclusives are services from Sony and MS themselves.
text: They are not here yet, but coming.
text: As for independent emulators and such - I just don`t see it happening, not for a long time.
text: But that`s only my opinion anyways =)
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/62507/icebat
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
There are Xbox 360 and PS3 emulators in development currently.  Emulating a PS3 is a difficult task because it's main processor, Cell, resembles a modern GPU more than a regular CPU.  
While it is a difficult task, it seems that there are currently emulators capable of playing console games, in development.