Sony Soothes PS3 Back-Compat Fears

Only a few PS2 games working? Not for long, says Sony.

Many people were upset when Sony revealed that because of hardware changes in the European model of the PS3 the system wouldn't be able to play as many PS2 games as the US and Japanese versions. Worse still is a report this week that only a small percentage of current PS3 games are working on final systems. But not for long.

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Sony is working on an update that will be applied to PS3s on launch day, a spokesperson for the company said. The download will update the firmware of the PS3 and includes backwards compatibility for more than 1,200 PS2 games.

PS3s sitting in stores do not have this updated firmware and so do not support as many PS2 games right now, said the spokesperson.

The version of the PS3 due on 23 March in Europe is missing PS2 components that are in current US and Japanese models. In those regions Sony came close to meeting its own goal of full backwards compatibility with all PSone and PS2 games.

In Europe, the PS3 will support around half of the release PS2 games at launch - a fraction that will be increased with software updates. Sony has replaced the PS2 hardware with software emulation.

This is a similar kludge Microsoft was forced to use with the Xbox 360. The company has slowly been updating its console to play more Xbox games, though a Microsoft spokesperson is reported to have admitted that the company is scaling back on its backwards compatibility updates.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo