Wednesday, July 1st 2009
Sony Patents PS2 Emulation Software for PS3
To be fair, Sony made a bit of a mess of the backwards compatibility feature of the PS3. Initially the Playstation 3 shipped with the main processing unit from the Playstation 2, called the Emotion Engine as part of the SKU which meant that in effect, you were buying a PS3 and PS2 in one box, providing universally compatibility for all Playstation games. This feature was present in Sony's Playstation 2 for PS1 games, and it would have provided a good advantage over its main competitor Microsoft's Xbox 360, which only has limited backwards compatibility of original Xbox games. Presumably to cut costs to make pricing of the PS3 more competitive, Sony dropped the Emotion Engine from future SKUs severly crippling support for backwards compatibility.
It would appear that things could be about to change however, as it seems Sony have filed a patent for technology enabling the emulation of the PS2 Emotion Engine on the Playstation 3's beefy Cell processor.
In the world of emulation, there are two ways such a thing can be done, either all of the code to be emulated must be translated to understandable code before processing, or the system must be provided with a library for which to reference for how to process the emulation code during processing.
Source:
Siliconera
It would appear that things could be about to change however, as it seems Sony have filed a patent for technology enabling the emulation of the PS2 Emotion Engine on the Playstation 3's beefy Cell processor.
Sony developed a way to translate instructions from an Emotion Engine chip into chunks that can be referenced.
Figure 2 from the patent is a schematic drawing of how the system works. Figure 3A is a drawing of the PlayStation 2's chipset. Figure 3B is the emotion engine. Figure 4 is where the whole story gets interesting! It's "an example of a host system based on a cell processor that may be configured to emulate the target system." The target is figure 3B, the Emotion Engine.
50 Comments on Sony Patents PS2 Emulation Software for PS3
Now that the PS2 is starting to come close to end of life, it makes sense for them to add it now...
May 2009 NPD numbers:secondstorygamer.com/2009/02/january-2009-npd-numbers/
I mean if you really care that much about backwards compatibility for the PS2, www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10756401
They way I see it, this is just them covering their asses on former emulation, before a 3rd party tries to get a piece of the pie.
Meh, either way, I have a 60GB launch console, so it doesn't effect me anyway. lol.
news.spong.com/article/18408/Lots_of_PlayStation_3_Backwards_Compatibilty_Patents
As someone else already pointed out; they filed this in 2007 and it's only been approved recently; it really says nothing about whether they are working on it or not.
Sincerly I hope they are; as a PS3 without PS2-Support is a severly crippled PS3 in my book.
Though I wish they would make some more hardware cuts, and possibly lock the ability to play blu-ray movies in the software, and release an even cheaper version.Exactly why I made sure to pick up a 60GB PS3 when it was announced that the new versions wouldn't have PS2 support. Oddly though, I haven't actually played a single PS2 game on it in the over 2 years I've owned it. I've stuck some PS2 games in it just to test it, but never actually sat down and played a game on it... Though FFVII has been calling my name recently.
as someone who dabbles massively with emulators,i at first got excited by the prospect of being able to play ps2 games on the pc but then i realised whats the point i've got a ps2
which still works (slight laser probs but nothing to write home about) the only benefit would be better graphics
downsides (in summer)excess heat from pc
plus i can get most of the games anyway for the pc(yes yes there are a few ps2 exclusive titles)
as for ps2 emulation on the ps3 yes they really did waste an oppertunity there a golden 1
When is GT5 coming out? I bet I could finish Forza 3 when it comes out and GT5 still won't be out.