Friday, February 23rd 2007
European PS3 will not be as compatible with PS2 games as American/Japanese counterparts
When Sony launches the PS3 in PAL territories on March 23rd, it will not be the same model as the one that was released in America and Japan last year. A spokesperson from Sony says "The backwards compatibility is not going to be as good as the U.S. and Japan models". This is because Sony made some changes to hardware dedicated to emulating the PS2. The hardware that was dedicated to emulating PS2 games is being used to accelerate native PS3 games. This will especially come in handy as Sony moves on to making games purely for the PS3.
Source:
Reg Hardware
12 Comments on European PS3 will not be as compatible with PS2 games as American/Japanese counterparts
Anyway, what would be the point? A PS3 (US and Japan) and a faster PS3.1 in Europe that would run games that COULDNT be run on the US and Japanese versions! Well, game developers just ARE NOT going to support 2 versions of the PS3. Imagine the code management issues... and the marketing headaches. OMG!
j/k
TBH I expect that any games worth running will have perfectly fine emulation - I mean the PS3 has so much power in reserve that running a PS2 game using software emulation should be fine... maybe Picture In Picture 3D graphic!!! Play one game low-res with the emotion engine, and one game high res using the cell processors :roll:
If it is truly as awsome and powerful as Sony makes out, then I have to agree that I don't think much performance is to be gained by this, but Sony won't listen to the consumer whilst its console is flying off the shelves. Admittedly it isn't (and I won't be buying one for a while) but I still reckon it'll end up being the best selling console.
Remember that there were yield issues on the Cell. It's taped for 8 cells, but 7 functioning is OK for PS3.
Perhaps what they are saying is that the EUROPEAN model will have 6 functioning cells... ie. they will use the reject chips for the European model.
In a twist of "P.R." the US version had a hardware emulator running on one dedicated cell. In the European version they've stopped that. WOW THAT FREES UP HARDWARE. W00T.
The emulation is now a "thread" on any cell managed by the scheduler. OH, NOT SO W00T AFTERALL