Makers of PlayStation Vita emulator release ‘experimental’ Android version

The Sony PlayStation Vita emulator Vita3K has been available for Android devices since Sunday. The emulator requires at least Android 7 and a device with an ARM64 SoC. The developers emphasize that the emulator is still experimental and therefore may crash.

The makers have the Android version of Vita3K published on GitHub and say on Discord that the emulator will at least work on a device with a Unisoc T618 SoC with 3GB memory and a Mali G52 MP2 GPU. The Unisoc is an entry-level SoC that was announced at the end of 2019. With those specs, the emulator can play “many games at a consistent framerate.”

To install games, they must first be decrypted, which according to the developers can take time. The app must remain open during this process. The makers say that the keyboard may also not always work and that the touch-sensitive parts that were behind the Vita do not yet work in the Android version of the emulator. Games that require this must be played in PS TV mode. The makers explain via a guide how to dump a purchased vita game to be able to play it in the emulator.

Vita3K is an emulator of which a Windows, Mac and Linux version was previously released. The makers claim that 422 of the 1085 Vita games released work in the emulator. Sony released the PlayStation Vita in the Benelux in 2012, but four years later the company stopped selling the handheld. Since 2018, Sony no longer makes physical games for the console.