PlayStation 4 emulation is picking up pace, but you’ll still need to wait a while to play Bloodborne

Typically, consoles can take a few years to be emulated, and some are significantly harder than others to crack. PlayStation 3 emulation is still in constant development thanks to the specialized architecture of that particular console, and Xbox 360 emulation is also in a constant development cycle. In the case of both consoles, some games are still unplayable in certain situations. Given that, PlayStation 4 emulation was considered by many to be a difficult one to get working, but ShadPS4 is up and running and already launching games.

Spine was the first PlayStation 4 emulator to be teased, but that was shown off way back in 2022 and ceased development quite early on. It failed to launch more complex titles but still provided a starting point to any would-be developers who wanted to try and finish the job, even if it wasn’t an open-source emulator. Following that, fpPS4 came along, and despite its sporadic development, has managed to get quite a sizeable compatibility list going. With ShadPS4, there are already plenty of games booting and starting in it, and that includes the PlayStation 4 exclusiveBloodborne.

You’re still quite far from playing most games yet, though

A lot of games can’t be played for long

While ShadPS4’s swift improvement has been impressive to watch from the sidelines, it’s still a long way off from being truly playable in a lot of titles. Bloodborne still looks messy with a lot of textures not loading in, and there are several hacks and changes done so that the game can launch and start without crashing. These hacks prevent the game from being properly playable but demonstrate that the emulator is getting there in terms of playing one of the most intensive PlayStation 4 titles.

As it stands, there are many big improvements focused on Bloodborne in 0.2.1 of the emulator, but the latest official release available for download is 0.2.0. The emulator is completely open-source so you can compile it with the latest changes if you wish, and there is a full game compatibility list on GitHub that you can check out too. It began development over a year ago, so while it feels as if this emulator appeared out of nowhere, it’s actually been going for quite a while. It’s only recently that bigger games have become possible to launch, and there’s still a lot of work to do.

If you want to give it a try, there’s a full quickstart guide on how to get ShadPS4 up and running. We don’t recommend actually trying to use it yet as the amount of work required to get it up and running is significant compared with what you’ll actually get from it, especially as you need a number of PlayStation 4 system modules to launch games, too. Right now, there are very few games that are fully playable. with only 44 titles listed as playable, most of them being 2D games. fpPS4 has a bigger compatibility list, but the development is sporadic.

Right now, ShadPS4 is following the typical path that emulators follow when being developed. Like with Skyline on Android, the developers focused on getting one game working, Super Mario Odyssey, as it was a complex game, and what was discovered and fixed would have knock-on effects on other games, too. That’s the same here, and any work done in getting Bloodborne working will also improve things for other games, too. It’s an exciting time to be an emulation fan, and we recommend keeping an eye on this project.