Vita3K emulator in development – PSVita emulator currently in early stages but still quite promising as some homebrew can be run!
At long long last, work got started on an emulator for the PSVita called Vita3K. While that’s awesome, it also means that, quite ironically, development on an emulator for the Vita got started after that for the Nintendo Switch, a console released a staggering 5.25 years later!
What is Vita3K?
Vita3K is currently an experimental emulator for the Playstation Vita, a console released in late 2011 that’s been mostly abandoned by Sony for quite a while (bar a few updates, most of which intended to break the homebrew scene’s achievements).
VitaQuake running on the Vita3K emulator. Quite promising in my opinion
The developer of this long-awaited emulator seems to be Peter Mackay, a face unheard of in the PSVita scene as far as I know. That being said, the legitimacy of this emulator is certainly not an issue since it’s open-source and popular scene developers such as Rinnegatamante, frangar and devnoname120 have contributed to the code base.
What can it currently run?
Currently, Vita3K, the only PSVita emulator to date, can do the following:
- Run some homebrew applications in VPK format such as VitaQuake (probably the best looking Vita homebrew thanks to 3D GPU acceleration with VitaGL), vitaTester and some other basic homebrew.
- It may also be useful for those who have just started to dabble with PSVita homebrew development and want a quick way to test very basic applications.
As you can see, this emulator is still at a very early stage and *NO* commercial games are currently playable. That being said, the fact that some homebrews, including one that uses the GPU, can run
means that there’s significant progress.
What can I expect? Where can I stay tuned for more updates?
petmac (Peter Mackay). The creator and maintainer of this emulator. Unfortunately, we don’t know much about him.. yet. Image is his GitHub profile picture
As with all other emulators in early stages, don’t expect to be playing commercial PSVita games at 4K with 60FPS on your PC any time soon. That being said, some commercial games, especially simpler ones, may eventually become playable with more work.
If you wish to keep up to date with what’s going on with this emulator, simply follow the links below.
GitHub page for Vita3K: https://github.com/Vita3K/Vita3K
Patreon page (You may aid the project’s development this way but I feel like there should be more information and perhaps an official announcement before donating): https://www.patreon.com/Vita3K
Vita3K website (there isn’t a whole lot as of now): https://vita3k.github.io/
N.B: Unfortunately, there aren’t any compiled binaries for any platform yet :/
Pretty cool, first the switch emulator got a breath of life; now the PSVita.
wooh! awesome, soon we’ll be able to play all our collective console-games on the PC!
Now i just wanna see someone breathe life into the Xbox (original) emu scene!
Forget the xbox… back then no one was interested to make a universal functioning emulator (aside that halo2 emulator) and today everybody with knowledge of that mobile celeron / geforce 3 pcbox is grown up, busy and has moved on with life.
Only upside of that predicament is, the xbox did not have that much console only exclusives.
Halo and halo2 got pc ports and the majority of the xbox’s library got also released on gamecube, ps2 and pc.
The rest of which didn’t get ported to other consoles or pc are some crappy or obscure games (crimson sea/azurik/dragoon orta/gunvalkyrie…)
It would be nice to ever have a universal working xbox emu… but probably will never happen. Cut your loss, get a chiped xbox, flash modified bios for big hdd support, get sata to ide converter, get giant sata hdd and play.
language: its not an emulator FOR the playstation vita. It’s an emulator OF it. It EMULATES the ps vita.
You know I just want a 3.67 CFW which no one seems to working on but projects that pop out of nowhere like this always gives me like a 5% hope XD
I should not have updated my FW
From what I have gathered there can’t be a full fledged emulator of a console until it is fully hacked and understood… Meaning that a 3.6x exploit might be closer than you think. Personally I’m hoping for a plugin making it possible to play games locked to 3.61/65/67 on 3.60
Nevertheless im still waiting for a good Xbox EMU tho allthough xqemu is a start i was more hoping for an eeprom smartxx manager around it