AI coding agents speed up PS5 emulators and one-day game clones

By James Dore · 2026-10-09

A PlayStation problem that AI made bigger

PlayStation 5 emulation on PC has moved faster in the past few weeks than in the console's first five years, and the developers involved say AI coding agents are a large part of why. Read Only Memo's Wes Fenlon traced the surge to anger at Sony's reported decision to stop porting its single-player games to PC, the approach of translating PS5 system calls rather than emulating the hardware, and a flood of AI-assisted contributions.^[1] Sony's change in PC strategy was reported in late September; future ports will reportedly be live-service and multiplayer titles.^[2]

The forks pile up quickly. KytyPS5 has nearly 600 on GitHub, SharpEmu more than 500 and AnyPS5 more than 275, according to Read Only Memo. One Discord user counted "literally 500+ builds", with people "using AI to fix specific games and make them run faster". Another said the projects lacked direction: "it's the wild Wild West."^[1]

AnyPS5, an unofficial tool for porting PS5 executables to Windows and Linux, reached 1,118 of 1,166 GPU shader instructions, or 95.88 per cent, in a progress screenshot shared on 5 October, up from 52 per cent in an earlier snapshot. TweakTown cautioned that the figure does not mean most PS5 games now run on PC.^[3] Sony did not comment in any of these reports.

Games cloned in a day

The same tools are shortening the gap between an idea and a copy. In March, game developer Freya Holmér posted a prototype of a rotating-board Tetris; within days, AI-assisted clones appeared, and Holmér said she saw up to four. Charlie Greenman told 404 Media his version, Rotris, took "roughly a day" and "several prompts".^[4] 404 Media also described studios such as Midnight Works selling near-copies of trending games on major storefronts.^[4]

Now it is desktop software

This week the pattern reached professional software. Atlanta developer Brandon Thomas released ArtCraft, free open-source clones of seven Adobe apps built with an AI coding model, though he says they are "not anywhere close to ready".^[5] Prompt the Market covered the release in detail.^[6]

What it means for Australian makers

For Australian game studios, app developers and software brands, the shift is about time. A public prototype has long been the way to build an audience before launch; developers now warn it can also serve as a brief for someone with an AI agent and a free weekend. Takedown requests and platform complaints move in weeks, while a working copy can appear in days. Listed software makers are already priced for that risk: on 4 February Xero fell 11 per cent and WiseTech 6 per cent in a single morning as investors sold software stocks on fears of AI replacing them.^[7] None of these projects has been tested in court in the reports covered here, and the legal position differs between an emulator, a clean-room rewrite and a straight copy of code and assets.

James Dore

James Dore is Strategy Director at Bushnote, a leader in SEO and AEO in Australia. He writes on search, AI and the technology decisions shaping government and industry.