While the upgrades to RPCS3 won't revive Hellgate: London, they can provide nostalgic players and historians a taste of the online functionality of older titles. Related: PS5 Pro Version Possibly Leaked By Sony Patent This doesn't even go into MMOs and other online-only games that are completely erased because of this issue.

Games on the original Xbox Live lost their online support years ago, and many PS3 games relied on servers owned by developers and publishers that have long since unplugged everything.

This makes emulating the complete experience a hard task, and it has already led to many games going the way of the dinosaur before their time. Many games released starting in that generation rely on communication with servers outside the control of the end-user. Of course, one of the fundamental issues going forward when it comes to emulating the PlayStation 3 generation and beyond is the rise of online play. Of the two, the PlayStation 3 is further along, with almost sixty percent of its library now able to run on a powerful PC.

It's only in the last couple of years that eager gaming fans have seen any progress at all, and many games that players might want to 'backup' have issues that make the PC renditions less than ideal. Compared to past generations, emulation of both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games have been slow going. After a yearlong community effort, PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 can duplicate online support via a custom server called RPCN.

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