Sony Prepares European PS3’s Launch With …BAD NEWS
Posted February 25th, 2007 by Marius Trusculescu
Apparently Sony has learned nothing from the mistakes it made with the PlayStation 3 launch in the US and Japan as they are continuing the line of bad decisions with the European launch as well. Sony changed its opinion on the backward compatibility and the support for PS2 titles will not include as many titles as in the US and Japan.
How is that possible? Well the PS2 compatibility can be achieved in two ways:
- software emulations - creates a virtual PS2
- hardware -a special hardware component is included for compatibility
On the US and Japanese market the PS3 included this hardware component. But, as it is needed just to allow PS2 titles to be played on the PS3, Sony must have thought it can reduce the manufacturing costs by removing this part. So console will only use software emulation for compatibility with older games. However, the number of titles available will not be as high and the details (performance) in that games will certainly not be the same as with the PlayStation 2 (even if the newer PlayStation 3 has a superior hardware).
Although we understand that Sony loses money with every console it sales, we don’t like the way they try to make up for this money. Maybe if Sony would have shipped a cheaper version of the PS3 without the Blu-Ray drive then the console would not have been delayed as much and it could have been available in larger numbers at the launch.
