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Sony PlayStation (Games)

Sony Fixes Back Compat Issues in PS3 Update 147

Posted by Zonk from the progress-is-a-good-thing dept.
pl1ght writes in to say that that the much maligned PS2 back-compat issues the PS3 has been experiencing are now a thing of the past. The newest software update takes the OS from version 1.4 to 1.5, and in doing so seems to have cleared up the worst of the blurry and unreadability problems. There are apparently "still problems with specific releases that have yet to be addressed, but for the most part, your library of old releases should run no problem now -- and with higher clarity than was ever possible on the other machines, to boot." Nicely done, Sony.
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Sony Fixes Back Compat Issues in PS3 Update More

Sony Fixes Back Compat Issues in PS3 Update

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  • They got to it faster than MS, I've gotta hand it to them.
    • Yeah, Microsoft got a lot of FlaK for some of its initial backwards-compatibility decisions [penny-arcade.com]...

      I don't own a console right now, besides a Magnavox Odyssey 500, but I'm considering a PlayStation 3 if the price drops in the States even more significantly than it did recently in Japan, AND the Linux community makes more significant breakthroughs (I don't want anybody's crappy DRM in a product I own). There haven't been any significant issues with PS3 hardware failure, have there? This seemed to have been a big

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rwven ( 663186 )
      You're talking about completely different fronts here. The PS3's problems which were fixed had to do with how PS2 things LOOKED ugly on the PS3. Microsoft got flak for not supporting enough games. The funny this is, MS said from the get go: We're not supporting the whole library, we're starting small, and we'll add more games as time goes on.

      Sony promised perfect PS2 backwards compatibility. It turns out, some games don't work at all and those that did work looked like crap until this update.

      MS delivere

      • Re:As much as I hate Sony right now.. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by GeckoX ( 259575 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2007 @01:10PM (#17740408)
        Let's put it another way:

        (On the backwards compatibility front)
        MS promised next to nothing. MS delivered next to nothing.

        Sony promised everything, and delivered slightly shy of that. And has since fulfilled their promise.

        So because MS promised next to nothing and followed through, they're better than Sony that promised, and eventually (In fairly short order IMHO) delivered, as much as you could possibly expect.

        Really, come on now. That is simply pathetic to try to slag Sony because MS followed through on a promise of nothing.

        The ONLY argument that should be brought up in relationship to this topic is which system delivers more bang for your buck in the backwards compatibility department. Hands down, Sony wins. Period.

        But nice try at polishing a turd there ;)

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Doctor Crumb ( 737936 )
          "which system delivers more bang for your buck in the backwards compatibility department. Hands down, Sony wins. Period."

          Well, no, the wii delivers 100% backwards compatibility, and has done so from day 1. In fact, the wii's virtual console lets you play games from consoles that weren't even made by nintendo (sega genesis, etc), so it could even be said that it has >100% backwards compatibility...

          Regardless, I am excited to hear that sony has made good with the firmware updates!

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by oGMo ( 379 )
            Well, no, the wii delivers 100% backwards compatibility, and has done so from day 1.

            Yes, if by "100% backwards compatibility" you mean "for the 5-10 games you have to re-buy for the VC". Sony clearly has the shadier definition when they say "all the PS1 and PS2 games you already own".

            • No, by 100% backwards compatibility, GP meant 100% backwards compatibility with Gamecube games you already own. And yes, of the couple dozen Gamecube games I've tried in it, it does appear to have 100% backwards compatibility.

              GP even went on to clarify that when talking about the virtual console as something separate.

              --Jeremy
            • Yes, if by "100% backwards compatibility" you mean "for the 5-10 games you have to re-buy for the VC". Sony clearly has the shadier definition when they say "all the PS1 and PS2 games you already own".

              The Virtual console has about 40 games on list so far, but he wasn't talking about them.

              He was talking about all the Gamecube games he can play with the original controllers, and the original memory cards with progressive scan (if they originally supported it) from Day 1. As a bonus it works without buyi

      • To be fair, Sony only promised perfect backwards compatibility with PlayStation and PS2 games that followed the Technical Requirements Checklist for their respective systems, although it seems that they weren't even able to deliver on that at launch.

        You seem to imply that before this update, *all* PlayStation 2 games looked like crap, whereas the article only says "many" - and specifies Okami and Kingdom Hearts 2 as examples.
      • Didn't J Allard say something to effect:

        "...backward-compatible with top-selling Xbox games..."

        At release, too many supported XBox games where not "top-selling" at all and too many real sellers were ignored. They way they've handled BC at every step since then has been a joke with updates full of games I'm surprised anyone bought. Maybe they were right to hedge bets but at that point they shouldn't have promised any BC support. In essence, Microsoft seemed to promise nothing.

        On the other hand, only a ha

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by zyl0x ( 987342 )
      Troll? That's an ignorant mod. I was merely stating that for all the flak their getting from the PS3, they managed to fix a back-compat issue faster than the current console leader. It says something for the efficiency of their QC staff.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rwven ( 663186 )
        MS didn't HAVE any backwards compatibility "issues." They delivered what they promised...even if some people didn't like it. Sony promised the world, but only delivered North Korea. What do you want?
    • Reading all the threads for this post, I feel I must point out that "Misinformed" =/= "Troll".

      It is true that both Microsoft and Sony have now delivered on their promises, and that Microsoft didn't promise much. However, this does not make the OP a troll.

      At the very least the OP is interesting if not insightful. Microsoft has had over a year to expand their library of compatible titles, and the list still remains rather small. While they've fulfilled their promises, it feels as though they did the bare mini

  • PS3? (Score:4, Funny)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2007 @12:43PM (#17739966) Homepage
    What's the PS3 thing everybody is talking about?

    Oh right, it's the new Sony gameconsole that is still not available in Europe (and a shit load of other countries).
    • Have you considered importing one from the US? We've got plenty here...
    • There are plenty of extras here in the US, feel free to take them, we don't want 'em. Seriously, here you can go into any electronics store and see stacks of them. Nintendo Wiis, not so much. They are still selling out as soon as they hit the shelves.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      IBM finally released a successor to the Personal System/2. MCA Express slots for everyone!
  • Wow, some good news on the PS3 front! While I won't be running out to get a Playstation 3 right away, I'm very glad to hear that the graphics problems with legacy titles has been solved. The fact that the machines got out the door with such egregious issues is a testament to the time pressure Sony was under to launch the PS3. With some luck, the European launch will be a much smoother affair than the US one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rwven ( 663186 )
      No doubt. As long as Sony continues on an upward trend, I'm hopeful for the future of the PS3. At launch time I was very skeptical. I don't own a PS3 yet, and I won't until we can get them cheaper (one of these days), but it's nice to see visible changes in the system as they update things.
    • With some luck, the European launch will be a much smoother affair than the US one.

      I think that is (pretty much) ensured. At the PS3 launch in Europe the supply should be greater (because of increased manufacturing capacity), and the number of scalpers should be dramatically lower (from reports that most people did not make $2,000 overnight and lots of people lost money after the North American Launch) so it should be far smoother.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MeanderingMind ( 884641 )
        I'd almost wager that it was a blessing more than a curse that the EU had to wait. It'll probably be far easier for people who want PS3s to get them without fighting with scalpers, thieves and fanboys.

        Hopefully we won't see any of the riots and other ill news that came with the US and Japan launches.

  • Hell just froze over (Score:5, Funny)

    by Karganeth ( 1017580 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2007 @12:47PM (#17740022)
    Zonk said something nice about Sony. And damnnit, I was looking forward to the warm weather.
  • Or is it like PC console emulators, where they use some fancy algorithm to round the corners of the pixels? Or maybe they do nothing at all?
    • I hope they do something to the graphics because it's really disappointing to see PS1 era games on a 50 inch television. I've hooked an N64 up to a 50 inch television, and the it hurts your eyes to play. You get a headache after about 10 minutes. I hope they do some nice tricks to get the graphics looking better, because most of these games weren't designed to be played on such a large screen.
      • The only thing they can do is run the game in a higher resolution. It's essentially the same as an upscaling DVD player, which takes the standard NTSC image from a DVD and converts it to an HD signal (720p, 1080i, or what have you). Just like with upscaled DVDs, there's no way to add more detail than was there originally, however. You can't add more polygons to models or more detail to textures after the fact. In the case of a lot of the later PS2 and Xbox games, where developers were creatively finding
        • You can make things look better by using techniques such as anti-aliasing. If you have to scale textures, there's different algorithms that can be used and you get very different results depending on which ones you use.

          • You can make things look better by using techniques such as anti-aliasing.

            Older televisions had the far superior "poor man's AA". i.e. Everything was a bit blurry anyway, so you never noticed the poor quality of the graphics. Now scale those up on a 50", super-sharp, LCD monitor, and things are going to look bad. And not only will they look bad, but you'll be able to see just how bad in excrutiatingly fine detail!

            Adding software anti-aliasing would help some, but it still comes back to the fact that the PS1

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 )
              PS1 games will never again be viewable the way they were intended.
              That's a bit ominous, especially when anyone can still blow $20 on a junky color TV and hook an old Playstation up to it. Not every television purchase is a 90" super-sharp plasma-flatscreen home-theater football-humper yet.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Mr2001 ( 90979 )

                Not every television purchase is a 90" super-sharp plasma-flatscreen home-theater football-humper yet.

                In fact, hardly any of them are. You wouldn't know it from reading tech sites like this one, or visiting Best Buy where they blast you with "WE DO HD RIGHT!" as soon as you walk in the door... but 89% of American households are still using good old 4:3 480i.

                Most people just don't want to spend $750-$3000 on a TV, even if it does have six times as many pixels. All these HD-focused consumer devices (HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, Apple TV, etc.) are wasted effort until the prices come way down.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Perseid ( 660451 )
            The PS2 has texture filtering for PS1 games, but it blasts compatibility to pieces. And there's really nothing you can do to get a PS1 game to look good on a HD screen. You can make it look less-ass, but that's about it. Keep your old TV. :)
    • The emulator I tried for PS1 games did have graphical glitches -- which really bugged me in FF7 and FF8 cinematics -- but it also did use OpenGL for some of the graphics. Not all -- and not all of them could go high-res anyway, other than anti-aliasing (which is the name of the "fancy algorithm" you were talking about) -- consider FMV cutscenes, hand-painted backgrounds/skyboxes, and so on.

      And for the most part, they won't be able to improve the models themselves. I'd do very, very aggressive Level-of-Detai
  • Help with some of Sony's problems selling the console. The ability to play your old games from the older systems in my opinion is one of the reasons to upgrade. Who would want to play a brand new console that forces you to plug in you old console in order to play your old games?
    • How many individuals actually play their old games? I was a packrat once myself. I had a goal to save all the titles for every console I ever owned. There really wasn't a point, as they did nothing but take up space. There wasn't really anything wrong with them, but, typically, a game will not last more than 6 months - console-wise.

      So now, I take my old games to The Exchange and either take the money or trade them for a newer title. I beat the games I purchase and after the multiplayer component is

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by miyako ( 632510 )
        Personally, I would like to use this to finish playing through Final Fantasy XII, and will probably use it to play through God of War II when it's released as well. If the PS3 will run all of my PSone and PS2 games, then why should I keep my PS2 taking up space on my desk, when I can free up that space and pass the PS2 along to someone who never got a chance to own one.
      • My PS2 is dying, and I gave away my PS1 years ago.

        There are a great many games for both I still would enjoy playing, especially if the load times are reduced because of the power of the PS3. Maybe it's not worth $600 just for that, but if I can get that and some good games I'll do it.

        For now I'll wait, but later I'll be looking forward to a lot of my old games as well as the new ones.

        Dynasty Warriors 3
        Azure Dreams
        Front Mission 3
        Final Fantasy Tactics
        Jet Moto 2
        GTA3

        All worth the time, and all slowly becoming u

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        There wasn't really anything wrong with them, but, typically, a game will not last more than 6 months - console-wise.

        I take it you never got into real-time social sim games such as Animal Crossing. Yes, I say "real-time" because it takes 365 days, as measured by the GameCube console's real-time clock, to see everything in the game.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ProppaT ( 557551 )
      The feature itself is a selling point, but the PS3 always had this feature. I doubt this will help sales at this point seeing how dead the sales are. I don't think that most consumers were even aware of the graphical glitches the PS3 had rendering PS2 and PS games.

      Also, the hottest game on the market right now is still Guitar Hero 2 and, until Sony can offer us a way to plug in the Guitar Hero guitar and play it on the PS3, most everyone I know is going to have to have their PS2 sitting next to their PS3

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Erwos ( 553607 )
        I'm reasonably sure I heard that a third-party was making an adapter to do exactly that.
      • Dead sales? Every time I pass by the PS3 section in walmart / best buy / target, the PS3s are still sold out. It's not like they're just laying around, at least not in my area. You do have a solid point on GH2 though.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ProppaT ( 557551 )
          I don't know where you are, but there are literally small fortunes / mountains of PS3's laying unpurchased at retailers in the central Florida area. No joke, the EB games that I frequent told me they've had more PS3's returned than sold since the first of the year. That's just kinda sad...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GeckoX ( 259575 )
      Um, Microsoft for one?

      Traditionally, not that many consoles have had any level of backwards compatibility. Sony wasn't the first to try it, but they were the first to do it truly natively and not require separate slots for older media formats. They did such an amazing job of this with the PS2 that it has since become a de-facto standard for consoles...to at least attempt anyways. At the moment, Sony's still the only one that really has this down. But I think just about everyone sees it as a missing feature
      • The Wii plays the old Gamecube games perfectly as far as I've been able to tell, and I've got a rather large volume of games for the old NGC.

        You need either Gamecube or Classic controllers for it, but it works well.

        I won't call the Virtual Console backwards-compatibility, because it's really just emulation. Really good emulation, but emulation none-the-less.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      "Help with some of Sony's problems selling the console."

      $500 PS3 versus $130 PS2. I think I know which one I'd buy.

      Of course, I already have the PS2, so I'll take the $0 option.

  • Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by locokamil ( 850008 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2007 @01:01PM (#17740254) Homepage
    I know it's the mode to ridicule Sony for it's lameness on /.-- but this story (along with one I saw on Ars yesterday) is persuading me that perhaps the groupthink was too hasty to condemn the PS3.

    A $320 (after potential price drop for 20Gig model [arstechnica.com]) next-gen console with Blu-Ray? I was thinking of buying one just to run linux and to turn it into a MythTV "frontend" box with gaming capability... Admittedly the low end PS3 doesn't have wireless or the memory card readers, but it does give users the ability to swap out harddrives. Plus it will play all my PS2 games without too much hassle.

    Like I said... maybe it doesn't suck as much as we think it does. From where I'm standing, the TCO for a next-gen console with high def capability is substantially lower for the PS3 than the XBox360.

    (Yes, yes. I know there's another choice out there, but I've already got a Wii).

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tadrith ( 557354 )
      Some of us are condemning the PS3 for the company who made it, rather than the console itself.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by abigor ( 540274 )
        Which is of course stupid. I don't refuse to use Excel, the best spreadsheet software around, just because Microsoft are a bunch of assholes. Learn to take a more mature attitude towards a company and its products, and you'll probably enjoy life a lot more.
        • Which is of course stupid. I don't refuse to use Excel, the best spreadsheet software around, just because Microsoft are a bunch of assholes. Learn to take a more mature attitude towards a company and its products, and you'll probably enjoy life a lot more.

          One of the only ways to make a company accountable is to refuse to buy their products until they act in a way that you aprove of; if you disaprove of a companie's actions (say they use child labour on their clothing line) you can boycott their entire prod

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
          Uh, it's called boycotting. Ever heard of it?

      • Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)

        by oGMo ( 379 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2007 @02:07PM (#17741310)
        ...yet you'll buy an XBOX 360. Or Wii. People are quick to forget the past.
        • What are you talking about? Microsoft has never supported DRM, forced proprietary technologies, put companies out of businesses, used unethical business practices, or abused their monopoly in any way...
      • What do you have against Sony Games? It's Sony Music that came up with the rootkit.

        Not buying Sony music? Check. Not buying Sony games? Why?

        • What do you have against Sony Games? It's Sony Music that came up with the rootkit.

          Sony's share of Sony BMG Music is privately held by Sony Corporation. If Sony BMG loses money, Sony Corporation has the ability to route earnings from Sony Computer Entertainment to keep Sony BMG afloat. Besides, many of us are still peeved at Sony Computer Entertainment's persistence in its cat-and-mouse fight against PSP homebrew.

          • Sure it's all under the umbrella of Sony. But even thoguh they are under that umbrella, in practice if a division looses mone long enough it wll be folded or sold. In practice Sony Games has no knowledge, or control over what Sony BMG is doing - heck, the DRM choice was probably entirely up to Sony BMG as there's no way a technical choice like that was decided on-high.

            If you want to gripe about the PSP, I can understand it to some extent though I personally feel Sony has the right to update the product h

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tepples ( 727027 )

              In practice Sony Games has no knowledge, or control over what Sony BMG is doing

              If this is the case, then why doesn't Sony Pictures plan to sell copies of its films on HD-DVD?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kris_J ( 10111 ) *
        Is condemning it for its price and the DRM-riddled disc drive condemning it for the console itself or the company who made it?
    • The only currently planned price drop for PS3 is in Japan. Considering the production yields are way under their expectation, people would have to buy like 20 games at full price for Sony to break even on prematurely discounted hardware.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by 4g1vn ( 840279 )
      WOW! Finally an educated and well thought out post. I have the Wii and the PS3 and they both are great. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Hats off to you sir. If you ever want to see some real sony haters try digg.com.
    • A $320 (after potential price drop for 20Gig model) next-gen console with Blu-Ray?

      The 20GB model is $499. Period. It's far too premature to predict when, or even if, that price is going to drop, nor by how much it might drop.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      "A $320 (after potential price drop for 20Gig model) next-gen console with Blu-Ray?"

      Down from $500? You're dreaming. Sony dropped the price in Japan because they feel that Japan is more important than the larger North American market for some reason. With retailers in Japan effectively dropping the price a second time with nothing happening to the prices in North America, and with the European launch still months away, it won't be at least until 2008 before the price drops.

      After all, its main competition

      • You could get a Mac mini for less.

        I see a wii little Mac mini computer on apple.com [apple.com] for 600 USD, plus 20 USD for the adapter to plug it into a TV, plus 15 USD for a cheap Logitech gamepad, plus 130 USD for a PlayStation 2 slimline console to play commercial games. The total is 765 USD plus shipping and tax, but at least you get more RAM in the Mac than you do in the current version of Linux for PLAYSTATION 3 that can't see the RSX's VRAM.

        Third-party developers are going to write for the greatest common denominator, and for the forseeable future that includes rumble.

        Controller sounds (Wii) and rumble (Wii, Xbox 360) can be faked by playing them in the surround

      • >> Down from $500? You're dreaming.

        Sorry, I should have been clearer on this point. I was thinking of buying a Japanese PS3 on my next trip over there and bringing it back to the US. I do most of my gaming in Japanese because US translations of Japanese games (not to put too fine a point on it) suck.

        And even if I were to buy one in the US, getting a PS3 on the cheap doesn't look too difficult. Ebay has numerous postings (example [ebay.com]) for 20GB models going for under $400.

        >> You could get a Mac mini f

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jZnat ( 793348 ) *

          Sorry, I should have been clearer on this point. I was thinking of buying a Japanese PS3 on my next trip over there and bringing it back to the US. I do most of my gaming in Japanese because US translations of Japanese games (not to put too fine a point on it) suck.

          Don't get me started on that! I'm more pissed at the shitty translations in anime, but overall, it's hard to translate cultural things, so we end up with shitty translations (see: Zero Wing, "Shine Get!", and pretty much any originally Japanese game).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Duds ( 100634 ) *
      Yes but that arguement is like saying a Neon is more expensive than a Viper if you upgrade the neon to beat a Viper on the track.

      Perhaps I don't WANT to "upgrade" my Neon to play one of two doomed movie standards when it's perfectly capable of streaming hidef movies from my desktop.

      That's like calling the 360 "more expensive if you include the cost of the entire available games library" it's just not valid.
  • Okay, being that I don't own a PS3 and have only played one a grand total of once so far, can someone sum up the problem for me?

    I was able to play a PS2 game (Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne) and it looked okay. Blurry, yes, but I attributed that to the fact that it was a 4:3 480i game being played on a 1920x1080 50" LCD with the display stretched to occupy all the available screen real-estate.

    Does the PS3 now do anti-aliasing on PS2 games? Or any kind of improvement like the PS2 did with PS1 games?

    Or was thi
  • FTA: (my emphasis)
    one of the biggest annoyances out of the gate was the lack of pixel-perfect compatibility, despite being one of Sony's most touted features over Xbox 360, which has to software emulate each game in its back catalog.

    I thought the PS3 had a whole Emotion Engine in it. Doesn't that mean that the entire legacy PS2 rendering engine is present? I figured the blurriness was due to a dirty bridge between the legacy and current hardware.

    • Re:Software emulated? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Xerotope ( 777662 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2007 @01:24PM (#17740636)
      You read the parenthetical wrong. The subject is the Xbox 360, not the PS3. Split into two sentances, it would be:

      one of the biggest annoyances out of the gate was the lack of pixel-perfect compatibility, despite being one of Sony's most touted features over Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 has to software emulate each game in its back catalog.
      • The Xbox 360 has to software emulate each game in its back catalog.

        Which still doesn't make sense. You don't emulate a game, you emulate the hardware it was designed to run on.

        But we know what you meant.
  • This issue was quite a big failure by the slashdot editors.

    There have been lots of slashdot articles bashing the PS3 for minor issues. However, on this issue, which WAS a serious one, slashdot was pretty much the only site covering console games that DIDN'T report it.

    And no, the article linked to in the 'related articles' section at the top isn't about the same issue.

    Anyway, I'm in the UK, and this fix does at least mean that I can consider getting a PS3 when it is released. The issue was a deal-breaker for

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