Emulation, simply put, allows players to experience games on hardware that isn’t native. For instance, it can allow you to experience games that never left specific regions (such as Mother 3), or you can play particularly rare titles without destroying your wallet. PlayStation platforms are also able to be emulated. In this case, we'll discuss the PlayStation 4 and its emulator, fpPS4.
For Sony's consoles, software like ePSXe and PCSX2 allow players to do these things. PlayStation 3 emulation has existed for some time as well, though a bit less stable than the prior two, and now, it looks like PlayStation 4 emulation is now a reality. It’s far more limited in what it can run (as of current).
Triple-A games like God of War 2018 aren’t getting emulated anytime soon. What’s available to emulate is currently 26 indie titles and 12 homebrew games. The application’s developers have a short video explaining what games are playable, which you can view below.
PlayStation 4 emulation can be done through the fpPS4 application, which can be downloaded here. While the prospect is a very positive step forward for emulating video games of the past generation, it looks like it’ll be a very long way before you can play games like Ghost of Tsushima on PC (that is, outside of a PC version that just gets announced sometime in the future).
Supported games include A Boy and His Blob, Thomas Was Alone, Spy Chameleon, Sky Force Anniversary, Shutshimi, and more. The full compatibility list for fpPS4 references various games with no status shown (as they are either unable to run or have no logged performance). Overall, the project looks to be a great step forward; maybe in the future, we could emulate the high-profile AAA games of the past generation through the PlayStation 4 emulator. But whenever that does happen, we’ll update you when it happens. fpPS4 is only available on PC.
