Sony Releases PS3 Back-Compat Checker 68
With the 60GB version now 'sold out', the 80GB version of the PlayStation 3 is quickly going to be the only option for consumers in stores. Besides the hard-drive size, though, the two systems have another fundamental difference: the 80GB unit handles backwards compatibility with software and not hardware. What games work on the two console versions is now a bit trickier. To aid in your comprehension, Joystiq notes, Sony has released a handy online game checker to let you know how your library will fare. Over at Curmudgeon Gamer, they have an examination of a game library looking at both a PS1 collection of titles and a group of games from the PS2 era. Assuming this random sampling to be in any way indicative, it looks like there isn't much difference between software and hardware compatibility for PS1 games ... but PS2 games might not have an easy time of it.
To Clarify (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is precisely why the 60GB model is a better deal. It possesses both hardware and software emulation, thus insuring near 100% backwards compatibility and the ability to scale-up games that work with the software emulation. And it's $100 cheaper then the 80GB version. Of course this is all an attempt to clear the 60GB model out of the warehouses, so they can push their cheaper to manufacture 80GB. Which should receive a price drop by about $100 or so sometime shortly after the 60GB model is entirely sold out. At least it should, it would be very stupid of Sony not too.
And thats the best explanation I can give of Sony's current actions, hope it helps.
Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
When the PS3 was launched in PAL regions, it was launched without the hardware solution already. At that time, emulation was even worse than now, but has people said, it has been improving. There are still lots of problems though from what I've heard.
Now that they've improved software emulation a bit, they're ready to force it down the throats of American customers too. They stopped manufacturing the 60 GB units, and from now on will only produce 80 GB PS3 without software emulation, which will reduce their huge losses due to selling hardware at a loss.
They have said in their latest financial report conference that they expect to reach profitability in hardware sales later rather than sooner.
More likely than not, the new 80 GB PS3 is cheaper to produce than the soon-to-be-discontinued 60 GB one, because they cut out the PS2 chips, and, in terms of hard drives, 80 GB might even be cheaper than 60 GB, due to 80 GB being a very common disk capacity for laptops (note that the PS3 hard-drive is 2.5 inches, meaning the variety used in laptops).
I hope the above wasn't too confusing, feel free to ask any questions you might have...
I sure hope PS1 emulation works (Score:5, Insightful)
All joking aside, of course the PS3 isn't able to properly emulate PS2 games. I mean, the Emotion Engine produces graphics [that] are so amazingly lifelike [findarticles.com], for Christ's sake!
FTFA:
Sony and partner Toshiba say the new graphics processor has enough power to show humanlike motions such as facial expressions, as well as to learn, and to recognize speech. One analyst says it will merge TV and video games.
I mean, how can the PS3 compete with that?