How Do We Know that the PS3 Will Be 100% Backwards Compatible

[jvd]

But they did use some emulation last gen also so what's your point? Ken said it himself.

The point is it wasn't a 100% last gen when they emulated 1 system partialy . Why would it be 100% this time when they have to emulate 2 systems partialy / fully ?

Meaning that you think "it's not a given that PS3 will have BC out of the box".
Meaning that we would be required to buy some kind of upgrade (software or hardware) to enable it.
To which people are objecting because Sony has no reason to do that, apart from truly shameless greed. Whereas MS's situation is different, what with the HDD and all.

Meaning you can't read. I simply don't expect 100% compatibilty . Because even last gen sony couldn't give us that .

I think it will be bc out of the box . But with all titles ? No i think not . Will a software update fix it ? Mabye , mabye not .

There's also an interesting POV in the future of this-gen platforms. XB's 'dying' this year, whereas PS2 is to continue for a year or two more yet. There'll be people buying PS2 system's who'll want to grow with the hardware at a later date, so I think it's more important in Sony's eyes to provide BC support, compared with MS's afterthought solution.

xbox will have games through 2006 . I doubt we will see many ps2 games in 2007

I don't see how one can call xbox dead and ps2 alive when both will be phased out in a year or so

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm not expecting 100% emulation, but as long as most games (90%+) run that's what's to be expected. The main difference is we expect PS3 to emulate that 90+% out of the box when you insert your PS1 or PS2 game in the drive, whereas for XB360 you won't know whether your old collection will run straight on the system or if you'll be waiting for them to write a patch, never knowing if the game you want to play is on the list. That is, I have here PS2 games and I anticipate that I'll be able to run them on PS3, whereas if I owned XB I'd be looking at my games collection and wondering 'will this one work or not?'

PS1 emu on PS2 may not have been 100%, but how many people had 1st hand experience of putting in a PS1 game and it not working? I tried a mass of my mate's old PS1 games and they all worked, with texture filtering too. Out of the box. No recompiled .exe's or downloaded patches needed.

I don't see how one can call xbox dead and ps2 alive when both will be phased out in a year or so

Because you won't be able to go into a shop and buy a new XB by the end of this year, whereas new PS2's will be sold for 1-2+ years after PS3's release.

 

[Fafalada]

IIRC even the games on PS1 incompatibility list (I think there was what, 15 total out of 5000?) will still "run", just with some issues.
Not sure if there's even one game that flatout fails to work out there.

What I find ironic about this is that people bitch about it on one hand, and on the other they accept PC emulators for lastgen systems where usually you don't get a single game that has 0 issues.
There's always 'something' wrong, whether sound glitches every now and then or texture pops where it shouldn't, it's just never perfect.

 

[MasaC]

Sony is emulating old hardware just like ms . I see no reason to believe one will have clear sailing and the other wont just becasue one claims something even though we know they did not have a 100% sucess rate last generational transition .

Surely you must acknowledge there's quite a big difference between the two. It will be alot harder for xbox 360 to emulate xbox games than it will be for PS3 to emulate PS2 and PS1 games whether or not they're doing it by hardware/software or a combination of both.

Another thing, Sony never claimed 100% backward compatibility at E3. The claimed B/C with more than 13000 PS1/PS2 games combined.

 

[Megadrive1988]

PS3 will not be 100% backwards compatible with PS1 and PS2 games just like PS2 is not 100% with PS1 games. but 99% is good enough.

hopefully PS3 will be able to play the PS1 games that PS2 either could not, or played very slowly (i.e Gradius Gaiden)

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

?

Statistically what? If you are saying that because the PS 1&2 library is LARGER than the Xbox library, than MORE games will be back compat on the PS3 (since 90% of 10,000 is more than 90% of 1500), then sure...

That was my argument. That's why I said "statistically" instead of "technically".

 

[London Geezer]

Where's this thread going?

We keep repeating the same point, which is "PS3 will not be 100% backwards compatible with PS1 and PS2 games just like PS2 is not 100% with PS1 games. but 99% is good enough." (thanks Mega for summing it up the last time) and that's it.

99% is more than good enough, even though 1% of 13000 games is 130 problematic games, which sounds like a big number but looking at the bigger picture, it really isn't.

Until we know how they do BC, what more is there to say about this?
And even when we do know, So what? There's gonna be 13000 old games you can play on PS3, if Sony keep their word. End of.

 

[jvd]

IIRC even the games on PS1 incompatibility list (I think there was what, 15 total out of 5000?) will still "run", just with some issues.
Not sure if there's even one game that flatout fails to work out there.

It depends on what your meaning of some issues are . I believe ridge racer would pause for 4 or 5 mins during a race before starting again . I also believe there was one game in which there were no walls or floors .

There was a list by sony given to the stores a few weeks before launch of games that would not work with the system . Basicly games that are unplayable

Surely you must acknowledge there's quite a big difference between the two. It will be alot harder for xbox 360 to emulate xbox games than it will be for PS3 to emulate PS2 and PS1 games whether or not they're doing it by hardware/software or a combination of both.

No I don't see that at all. If anything it will be harder for sony to emulate two systems than it will be for ms to emulate one . Its also dubious to say it will use a combination of both wne we simply don't know . I have yet to hear of any of the past hardware from the psone or ps2 to be listed in the hardware lists . Surely by now a mention of a gs or ee in the south bridge would have hit the net .

The main difference is we expect PS3 to emulate that 90+% out of the box when you insert your PS1 or PS2 game in the drive, whereas for XB360 you won't know whether your old collection will run straight on the system or if you'll be waiting for them to write a patch, never knowing if the game you want to play is on the list. That is, I have here PS2 games and I anticipate that I'll be able to run them on PS3, whereas if I owned XB I'd be looking at my games collection and wondering 'will this one work or not?'

I'm sorry but how can u state tihs as fact ? Do you own both systems and are currently testing it out ? MIcrosoft said they would start with the most popular games and work thier way down . But what does most popular games mean ? Anything that sold 1 million + world wide ? Anything that got an average ranking of 8 in magazines ?

How many titles is it ? ANd how many titles will sony actually have working out of the box ?


None of these have answers and not even sony has given us one .

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The basis of any argument against effective BC seems to revolve around 'can we trust anything Sony ever says seeing as they a bunch of lying scumballs' philosophy. With nothing more to go on it's a case of believing Sony's word on the matter or not. Trying to discuss how hard it is to do (something we've already visited on this forum) is pretty pointless without details as it's all open-air guesswork.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I have yet to hear of any of the past hardware from the psone or ps2 to be listed in the hardware lists . Surely by now a mention of a gs or ee in the south bridge would have hit the net .

Why? We've no leaks at all on RSX or other components. Not every company is as ineffectual as MS at keeping information undisclosed! We have it from the horses mouth that PS3 incorporates a partial hardware solution. Just because the nature of that hardware solution is unspecified is no course to doubt its existence or viability.

I'm sorry but how can u state tihs as fact ? Do you own both systems and are currently testing it out ? MIcrosoft said they would start with the most popular games and work thier way down .
How many titles is it ? ANd how many titles will sony actually have working out of the box ?
None of these have answers and not even sony has given us one

MS have said that not every title will be playable and it's been discussed before they need specific solutions for any complexity beyond 'level 1' games. There's no official figures but surely if that were almost every game MS would say 'Almost every XB game playable' instead 'the most popular'. They have deliberately limited the scope of their promise for BC to a subjective 'most popular' term. Whereas Sony have said they will be BC with 13,000 titles, saying they are looking to do with PS3 what they managed with PS1. MS stated from the beginning that BC wasn't a major priority for them, so why would they go to great lengths to incorporate it? Whereas KK has said that he wants PlayStation to run all PlayStation software through to PlayStation 7 and beyond, and he wants emulation to 'be perfect'. There is definitely a different take on BC between the two console companies which gives far more reason to belive Sony's as yet unknown solution will be more thorough than MS's known solution.

That's not to say it won't pan out. Maybe it won't be as effective as Sony would hope. But until we have something more to go on I see no reason to doubt a hardware assisted emulation will provide a high level of compatibilty.

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

The only mention of hardware that I remember hearing in regards to b/c is that Cell is bi-endian meaning that it can process in big or little endian.

 

[jvd]

Why? We've no leaks at all on RSX or other components. Not every company is as ineffectual as MS at keeping information undisclosed! We have it from the horses mouth that PS3 incorporates a partial hardware solution. Just because the nature of that hardware solution is unspecified is no course to doubt its existence or viability.

Have we ? We've only heard they are using a partial hardware soultion to bc . What does that mean exactly ? All emulation uses hardware . Is that what sony meant ? Or are they increasing the cost of the system by adding in antiquated hardware to support bc ?

MS have said that not every title will be playable

And not every sony game will be playable . We know this because this is what happened with the ps2 .

discussed before they need specific solutions for any complexity beyond 'level 1' games

Yet you can't give a % of titles . So how many is it ?

There's no official figures but surely if that were almost every game MS would say 'Almost every XB game playable' instead 'the most popular'.

No there isn't because they are still working on it and most popular could turn into 80% by launch . We do not know , we also do not know how effective sony's will .

Yet u claim one is better than the other when you clearly say you have no clue how either one is working and how many games will actually work .

 

[MasaC]

No I don't see that at all. If anything it will be harder for sony to emulate two systems than it will be for ms to emulate one.

The xbox is quite a bit more powerful than the PS2 and alot more powerful than the PS1. The PS3 is quite a bit more powerful than the xbox 360. You do the math. It has more to do with what kind of hardware each are going to emulate than with the number of systems. Xbox 360, which is weaker than PS3, will have to emulate hardware that's more powerful than what the PS3 will have to emulate.

Next, B/C on the PS3 was designed from the beginning and trust me, Sony knows their hardware in and out and will have no trouble running PS2- and PS1 software on PS3 hardware. On the xbox 360, B/C seems more like an afterthought. How else would you explain HDD not being standard on the xbox 360?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Well of course there's no official scientific proof that in saying they have a partial Hardware solution, Sony were just talking about using the existing Cell CPU, but that's pretty ridiculous reasoning that just seems to be trying to find a reason to doubt PS3's BC implementation. Do you call XB360's BC hardware assisted? For goodness' sakes, every emulator can be considered hardware assisted by that reasoning as they all need some hardware to run. WinUAE could by that reasoning be a hardware assisted Amiga emulator.

This is a dead-end argument and I'll leave it here. Suffice to say I'm expecting some hardware, as yet unspecified, to appear in PS3 to facilitate previous PlayStation emulation on a hardware level in some respects, even if that's just incorprating some degree of GS functionality int RSX rather than a full blown extra chip. But that's obviously because I'm a foolish sucker who's naive enough to believe when an Electronics Engineer with many years expertise says they're including a hardware solution to help with perfect emulation and cover all the crazy strange things developers use in their software, they're not just talking mindless rubbish and in reality it's an ineffectual software only solution.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

You're being stubborn, jvd. From what I garner, Shifty is pointing out the difference in the claims from the two companies. Sony's gone on record as promising full bc. That's what they said for the PS2, and that number ended up being like 99%. MS, on the other hand, isn't making such aggressive claims. Why? If they could get 99% bc, why would they hand Sony the advantage in PR? Why would they not play that up in order to make bc one less bulletpoint item they lose at? It would seem to me (and others) that it's b/c they probably don't expect to get a 99% bc. They might or might not in the end, but for now, they are clearly hedging their bets in the public arena.

PS3 might have worse bc than the 360. The 360 might have worse bc than the PS3. But for now, it's speculation. And the claims made by the two companies makes it pretty clear that Sony's got a lot more confidence in their chances than MS.

Anyway, anyone know/think the PS3 will have the PS2's IOP? That would help with PS1 compat. PS2 compat is the only sticking point IMO. PEACE.

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

The xbox is quite a bit more powerful than the PS2 and alot more powerful than the PS1. The PS3 is quite a bit more powerful than the xbox 360.

Stop it, please. You have no basis at all for that statement.

 

[mckmas8808]

No there isn't because they are still working on it and most popular could turn into 80% by launch . We do not know , we also do not know how effective sony's will .

Well we do know how good of a job Sony did with the PS2 BC. Shouldn't we respect history and feel it's going to be the same this time around too. You know Ken hasn't told us everything.

 

[London Geezer]

Well we do know how good of a job Sony did with the PS2 BC. Shouldn't we respect history and feel it's going to be the same this time around too. You know Ken hasn't told us everything.

Well in jeeves's defense, all sony did was just put the PS1 CPU in every PS2 and off they went with BC, not really a "good job". It was a "job". The big deal was that they thought about offering BC for free, technically it wasn't a huge feat.
Like this time around, the big deal (to me) is more the fact that they wish to offer PS3 buyers the chance to play up to 13,000 old games for free. How they do it technically is another matter and not a huge deal to much people.

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

Well we do know how good of a job Sony did with the PS2 BC. Shouldn't we respect history and feel it's going to be the same this time around too. You know Ken hasn't told us everything.

As was mentioned before, Sony had actual PSX hardware in the PS2 to facilitate b/c. Do they have the same thing in place for the PS3?

Edit: Damn, I basically repeated LB. Sorry about that, but um...what he said.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Only it's not the case that PS2 had a full PS1 inside it. One has mentioned (dunno if he's write though!) that it had the CPU, not the other gubbins. The graphics were emulated on the GS. It was a partial hardware solution. What's to stop Sony adding a similar partial hardware solution to PS3? If it'd only take a bit of jiggerypokery and 15 million transistors or less for GS, EE and VU's can be emulated on Cell and there's your BC. You don't need an entire sub-console embedded; only the tricky bits of it that aren't emulation friendly.