PS3 - not backwards compatible?

[Harrison]

Plus it is a sure bet that those 1000 odd games that will initially work properly will be the more popular best selling titles, and they will then start fixing the compatibility of more games based on their popularity and users requirements. After all, there is little point in wasting time getting a game to work if only 3 people in the world will ever take advantage of it's PS3 compatibility.

[Demon Cleaner]

I definitely hope my Barbie Horse Adventure game will work.

[Harrison]

Don't worry mate, knowledge of your secret gaming collection is safe with us!

[Harrison]

I just had a thought though. They will be concentrating on PAL PS2 releases for the PAL region PS3. This could be very bad news for importers/downloaders of US and JAP games. Although as standard they won't work in a PAL PS3 anyway, so lets hope the modchip makes sort this out. Maybe they ould stick the US/JAP firmwares on the modchip?

[Teho]

I just went through that EU backwards compatibility list in order to sort my PS2 collection into non-working and working. The list has three grades for games that work: 'Working perfectly', having 'minor issues' and 'noticeable issues'. If the game isn't on the list, it's not working.

So, based on that list, in my collection 39% of the games don't work at all. Meaning 61% are working to an extent. Completely broken down, my list is:

30% working perfectly
9% minor issues
19% noticeable issues
39% non-working

Not nearly as bad as feared, but of course not as good as 100% working.

But it's now confirmed that this move was planned all along. The PS3 really was meant to have software emulation to start with, but the NTSC models got the PS2 hardware as a last resort since the software solution wasn't ready. It's also been confirmed that the next revision of the NTSC models will also not have the PS2 hardware built in, but also go over to software emulation.

At the same time Sony has stated that though firmware upgrades may expand on that list from time to time, improving on the backwards compatibility is not a priority and is not something they will focus that much on.

So I guess it's a good idea to be hanging on to that PS2 a while longer.

[Submeg]

They are not thinking very clearly are they. Lets think.....People have what system right now? A PS2. So, they have games that run on....a PS2. So when the PS3 comes out, what games will they want to play? Games from the PS2. Oh, really? Well not all of them work....Well FU. I'll go buy an Xbox then.It will be funny when Sony realise their customers arent happy that they have to wait to play a PS3, seeing as everyone has been waiting for it to be released. I dont really feel like forking out another hundred bucks for a game.

[Harrison]

Except, look at the Xbox 360. Not many Xbox games work on an Xbox 360. Each game has to have emulation written specifically to support each title on the 360, so fans of each title have to hope and wait for the emulation for their favourite titles to be written.

The PS3 in contrast is aiming to eventually be backwardly compatible with all
PS2 titles. Consider how long most emulators such as WinUAE have been in development, and yet they are still not perfectly emulating everything. The PS2 is a very complete system to emulate, and even though Sony have the big advantage of knowing the system inside out, it will still take a lot of work with the software emulator to fully emulate the PS2 perfectly.

And as mentioned previously, doing this via software does mean they can keep working on it and improving it and releasing new firmware with better support. Something that would not be possible if the backwards compatibility was hardware based.

[Submeg]

Fair enough, I didnt know that. Interesting...well it will be cool when they can get a full PS2 emulator running...