PlayStation 4 software on PC [closed]

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PlayStation 4 has CPU which uses x86 instruction set. Almost all modern PC CPUs use x86 instruction set. Would it be possible to run PS4 code on PC without emulation (since PS4 software would have native PC code)? As far as I know we would have to convert PS4 executable file first to make it run on Windows, Linux and/or other OSes. Could it be a problem?

Answer 1

While it is completely possible, there are many obstacles that must be overcome:

• Obtaining the unencrypted game files. This will inevitably occur. I wouldn't be surprised if this has already occurred in the console hacking world.
• Determining the format of the executable. This is absolutely essential, but has already occurred in the PS3 and I have no doubt will also occur for the PS4 eventually.
• Reverse Engineering the system calls and hardware accesses. We know that the PS4 operating system is based on BSD, but we don't know much about how the PS4's games interact with the operating system and the underlying hardware. This will have to be carefully reverse engineered and could take a very long time.
• Faithfully re-implementing these system calls inside a compatibility layer, much like Wine re-implements Windows system calls on Linux. This would be a massive effort that would be almost as large as the Wine project itself. Worse, the developers will not have as many resources as the Wine developers for reverse engineering the system calls since the PS4 is a closed platform. In addition, it's likely that program code either accesses hardware directly or has hardware-specific data (such as GPU shader programs). Some hardware emulation will likely be required.
• Another option would be to run a virtual machine that faithfully emulates the hardware of the PS4 so that the original operating system can be ran and faithfully to provide the proper software environment. This will probably prove to be near impossible due to lack of documentation regarding the hardware and the low level details that would have to be recreated.

Many of these above obstacles are shared by the original Xbox. Despite it being over 10 years old and based on PC hardware, there is still much complexity surrounding the way the original Xbox's hardware works that makes it near impossible to emulate accurately. This would be much harder with the PS4

Likewise, we still don't know the exact structure of the system calls and hardware registers on the original Xbox, so trying to convert and run an executable is basically trial and error. To this day, only a handful of games can be ran in an Xbox emulator at all... This is worse than a PS2 emulator, which had non-PC hardware.

To conclude: It is completely possible, with a lot of work, effort, and expertise, to run PS4 software on a standard PC, however the amount of effort required makes this so difficult that it is unlikely to happen within the next decade, as the original Xbox has demonstrated.