Over the last week or so, various PlayStation 5 emulators came out of the woodwork, not least because they are more relevant than ever due to Sony’s decision to take physical media out back and do unspeakable things to it.

And while a few days ago one of the emulators managed to boot Demon’s Souls Remake, a major achievement in its own right, it’s now also been able to launch a much newer PlayStation 5 exclusive to the loading screen, Astro Bot.

As spotted by VideoCardz, RSantila, a member of the SharpEmu Discord server, managed to get Astro Bot past the “Sony Interactive Entertainment” screen, and though it would freeze and crash soon after, this is a major milestone for an early-stage emulator. It should be noted that Bloodborne went from loading screen to playable within a year or so, meaning we could be seeing PlayStation 5 exclusives playable on PC, at least to a certain degree, as soon as next summer.

A small step for man, and a giant leap for gamerkind. Image via nemmax (SharpEmu Discord)

Astro Bot is a 2024 PS5 exclusive and will be a great game to test to see just how capable the emulator is. Speaking of which, SharpEmu is just one of many emulators out there who are now participating in a sort of arms race, spurred by Sony’s anti-disc measures.

KytyPS5, another of the emulators, achieved even better results, albeit in games that aren’t PS5 exclusives but ports. Using the emulator, one user managed to get into the PS5 version of GTA 5 and even navigate the in-game settings and menus, a tremendous milestone all things considered. It even apparently got Quake 2‘s PS5 port to start rendering 3D environments, so we might be closer to the real deal than I ever would have imagined.

I initially thought it’d be another four or five years before we started seeing some early PS5 emulation, considering the fact that we needed a full decade before ShadPS4, the main PS4 emulator, could start doing similar things. I guess when you throw your entire community under the bus and threaten their games’ existence and preservation, you’ll inspire them to come up with their own solutions.

And I cannot thank all the programmers and community members out there who make these things possible.