Jailbroken PS5 Gets PS2 Discs Running Via Emulator

It Turns Out The PS5 Is Capable Of Playing PS2 Discs, If Sony Lets Us Via Adobe Stock. Published Oct 11, 2026, 5:09 AM EDT James Lucas is an Executive Editor at TheGamer who has worked in professional journalism since 2018. A Newcastle University graduate with a degree in Journalism, Media, and Culture, they have written hundreds of guides, news stories, and original reports, with bylines in IGN, NME, GaymingMag, and VG247, sourcing interviews with studio heads, legendary industry figures, prominent actors, and more. An expert on FPS games, Soulslikes, RPGs, and survival horror, James has intimate knowledge of a wide variety of titles, providing in-depth coverage and exclusive profiles. Some of the games they have extensively covered include: Half-Life 3, Counter-Strike, Elden Ring, and Fallout. They pride themselves on their consistently thorough research, leveraging nearly a decade of industry experience. You can reach them at James.t@thegamer.com Sony has steadily been rolling out PSX, PS2, and PSP games for its PlayStation Plus Classics Catalog, but it turns out the PS5 is capable of Xbox-style backwards compatibility, too. As reported by Tom's Hardware, modder Sword has released a native port of the PCSX2 emulator for jailbroken PlayStation 5 consoles, allowing you to play PS2 games directly from physical discs. When you insert a disc, the emulator copies its data onto the console's storage first, launching the game locally. Again, just like Xbox through its backwards compatibility program. If you don't have a disc drive (or yours is broken), external USB ones work too. PS5SX2 supports discs from any region, alongside the ISO, CHD, CSO, and ZSO formats commonly used for PS2 game images. There's just one catch: the PS5's built-in optical drive can't read CDs, meaning CD-based PS2 games won't work through it. That's a limitation of the console's optical hardware, however, rather than something Sword can fix. Even so, it's an ingenious workaround that brings PS2 games to the PS5 through a native emulator. And, as you'd expect with an emulator, it comes with plenty of enhancements, including up to 6x resolution scaling for 4K output, post-processing filters, widescreen and 60fps patches for supported games, and even online play through community servers using an emulated network adapter. PS3 Disc Support Is In Development, Too Sword isn't stopping at PS2 games, either. Players have been hankering for native PS3 backwards compatibility for years, especially given that playing PS3 games on PS5 means relying on decidedly unreliable cloud streaming through PlayStation Plus Premium. When asked whether PS3 disc support was possible through a PS5 port of RPCS3, Sword simply replied, "Yes, it's coming with it." While it's not quite as simple as flipping a switch to allow PS2 and PS3 discs to run on PS5, Sony already has an emulator for select PS2 games. Projects like this demonstrate the potential to expand that support to physical discs and a far wider library, meaning you wouldn't need to rebuy the games you already own. Indeed, according to another prominent homebrew developer, Al Azif, "the disc identification built into the PS4 and PS5 was built specifically to recognize PS1, PS2, and PS3 games." So, some of the groundwork is already there. Brand Sony Original Release Date November 12, 2020 Original MSRP (USD) $499, €499, £449, ¥49,980 (Base) / $399, €399, £359, ¥39,980 (Digital), Operating System Orbis OS Processor Custom 8-core AMD Zen 2 @ 3.5 GHz Resolution 720p - 8K