PS3 Will Play More Than 1,000 PS2 Games

That's quite a bit below the capabilities of the US and Japanese versions.

The new model of the PlayStation 3, which makes its debut in Europe later this month, will be able to play back more than half of the PlayStation 2 games out there.

That comes from Sony's Phil Harrison, who was speaking to quasi-official Sony blog ThreeSpeech in an attempt to quell some of fears that arose after the company said that it was changing the PS3 hardware and that only a "limited" number of PS2 games would work on the new system.

Sony is right now working on software emulation that will replace the PS2's Emotion Engine, which will not be included in European models of the PS3 as it had in those in the US and Japan.

"The situation is changing every day," Harrison said, "but on March 23, we expect the list to include over 1,000 PS2 titles."

Thanks to a productive few years, the PS2 has developed a bulging library of over 2,000 games, meaning the PS3 will be able to play at least half of them. In the US and Japan, backwards compatibility is reportedly estimated at over 90 per cent. The US and Japanese versions of the PS3 include what Harrison calls a custom version of the Emotion Engine that powered the PS2.

Harrison did not go into details on which games would work but admitted that it was Sony's policy to try to get the most popular games working.

PS3 owners will be able to check if their games will work by visiting Sony's online resource at faq.eu.playstation.com/bc. The site will be live from 23 March - the launch day for the PS3 in Europe.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo