PS3 40 GB Backward Compatibility goes AWOL

News - MiA?

The welcome news of an entry level PS3 was warmly welcome at the end of last week. However the announcement seemed to raise as many questions as it answered. In particular was the issue of the cheaper console’s lack of backwards compatibility. Whilst things are still a little grey, it seems from what we have managed to dredge up that even the software emulation of the newer PS3’s required some hardware thingamabobs to work.

SCEE managing director Ray Maguire recently stated that Sony will use the money it previously spent on backwards compatibility to invest in new games. "It was a big decision, and we know it is a very emotive subject as lots of people think that backwards compatibility is high on the agenda and yet few really use it."

Not sure how close to reality this statement is, here at PlayTM towers we’ve really appreciated being able to play our old games without having to haul out another box when we wanted to fire them up. We were also looking forward to Sony’s promised incremental improvement of this backward compatibility through its updates. With them cutting back on this, does that mean an end to them filling in the PS2 gaps in their emulation? Only time will tell.

We suspect that there is still more to discover on this topic, and as usual we’ll be the first to tell you when we sniff out any more tit bits.