New PS3 model to hit Europe for 399 EUR
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Color me Dan
Regular
Ok, now that i've gotten over the initial shock: I do see this new SKU as a good thing, it will open the PS3 up for a new market who can afford it, and this is always a good thing. However, the 4 usb and card reader version is now the only way for us europeans to get BC. It sort of forces consumers who want BC to buy the remaining stock, i'd be all for the idea, but i have yet to afford the PS3 and might miss out...
I think they should probably keep the two SKUs. BC is a good thing for people with kids, as it allows you to play a lot of the simpler, cheaper and older PS2 games. That said, two days ago I had my cousin and his 3 year old daughter over and super rub-a-dub was enough fun right now (though she also had a great time with the dancemat downstairs, even if they only really was interested in the lights that go on if you step on one of the pads). That's also another thing, most families can probably relegate the PS2 to one of the childrens rooms, playroom, or whatever.
I don't use it too often anymore myself, only at the rare party and mostly with Buzz and a little Singstar. Singstar will soon be replaced with its PS3 version, but Buzz may take a while longer, so I'll miss that. But once the new version comes out, that'll be another must buy for me.
I don't use it too often anymore myself, only at the rare party and mostly with Buzz and a little Singstar. Singstar will soon be replaced with its PS3 version, but Buzz may take a while longer, so I'll miss that. But once the new version comes out, that'll be another must buy for me.
The other benefit of BC is reselling PS2 games as downloads. That ought to be well worth the cost of the engineers creating software BC. For me, the only reason not to do software BC is because they just can't, and rather than admit that their hardware that's 10,000x more powerful than PS2 can't run PS2 games, they fob us of with talk of redirecting funds to new game development. 
Color me Dan
Regular
How hard can it be to fully emulate the PS2 architecture on the Cell+RSX? Considering the fact that they have the blueprints for the PS2 and a good coding team. Hell, PCXS2 and ePSXe (especially the later) go by with hacks and reverse-engineering and do a good job on a wide variety of hardware configurations. PS3 is a static hardware platform, making an efficient emulator on it can't be THAT hard (do you notice i'm not a programmer? ) all things considered.
) all things considered.
I suggest searching for the old discussion on software BC, but the short of it is, GS worked so differently to conventional hardware that its very hard to emulate.
On Neogaf forum I saw one post someone dig it from somewhere else where was a question to someone at Sony regarding software BC in the future versions of PS3. The answer was little surprising at least (with current lack of BC in 40GB model) as it was in style, "No comment about software BC in the future".
Why they should answer like that at all if PS2 software BC is completely dropped from PS3 from now on?
Why they should answer like that at all if PS2 software BC is completely dropped from PS3 from now on?
My guess is that BC is dropped now from the SKU because they haven't got software emulation working yet, but may get it working later. Although that'd go against the comment that they want to divert funding.
Well, I would think there was a tradeoff. If hw-based BC costs are $10 per system, and they want to sell, what, five million systems, then that's the same as hiring ~500 programmers for a year to create a backward compatible emulator. Would that be sufficient, and could it be done? I would think a team a tenth as large could do 80% of the work, but it would take a legion of testers and time to get that last 20% (and I think you'd need that last 20% to make the majority of games work).
:shrug:
-Dave
The cost of creating an emulator isn't a lot. There's only so many engineers you can throw at the problem, like chefs cooking a dinner. You have to give them time to work things out, which won't be sped up with more people, and that's only if it can be worked out. There could be a cost in developing profiles or whatever for individual titles, and if that's necessary, the cost is probably not worth it. But I don't know what that'd be. I find it hard to visualize Sony assigning more than perhaps 20 people to this task, which wouldn't cost much at all relative to the PS3 life costs. But then those developers could be working on creating online code, firmware updates, etc. If there's other work to be assigned it'd make sense to move emu developers over.
Rainbow Man
Veteran
Hm. Would rasterization with Cell really be so difficult? The GS wasn't terribly fast by today's standards; it did have sheer grunt and efficiency though for the speed it did have due to its on-chip framebuffer but really, couldn't that be covered to a large extent by Cell's local store and enormous processing speed and high-bandwidth XDR memory?
If binaries are recompiled on the fly - perhaps even in advance by Sony - most of cell powr could be dedicated to GS emulation.
Surely it can't be totally impossible..?
Peace.
If binaries are recompiled on the fly - perhaps even in advance by Sony - most of cell powr could be dedicated to GS emulation.
Surely it can't be totally impossible..?
Peace.
Don't forget that Cell already has to emulate the EE chipset though.
dubyateeeff
Newcomer
AND! In five years you can copy paste your post and replace GS with Cell!
Finally, the PS3 at the price point it should have been launched at.
I was sooo pumped up before this gen. Now I'm thinking maybe I'll get one, but it depends on whether their competitors fix an issue that isn't to my liking or if Sony gets a bunch of good exclusive games first. I'm thinking maybe around FFXIII being released as an exclusive.
Oh, and I'm glad they finally dropped BC. I think it is an over emphasized (by Sony), convenient feature that not many people use. I'm hoping this will be one more reason for them to choose standard PC-parts for PS4.
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If a bunch of enthusiasts can make PS2 emulator on PC without any prior knowledge of inner working of the console itself I can hardly believe that Sony, who knows all "ins and outs" of their own console and have even "blueprints" of PS2, can't make something similar.
Sure it's really not exactly same as x86 is "open platform" (and everevolving) while PS3 is fixed hardware, but come on!
I don't demand 100% compatibility, but a possibility to play major PS2 titles on PS3, like Shadow of the Colossus graphically enhanced and without any FPS drop (which happen on PS2).
And it would be quite embarrassing for Sony if you would need a linux distro and exactly this PS2 emulator just to play PS2 games.
Sure it's really not exactly same as x86 is "open platform" (and everevolving) while PS3 is fixed hardware, but come on!
I don't demand 100% compatibility, but a possibility to play major PS2 titles on PS3, like Shadow of the Colossus graphically enhanced and without any FPS drop (which happen on PS2).
And it would be quite embarrassing for Sony if you would need a linux distro and exactly this PS2 emulator just to play PS2 games.
The fact some people can get some titles working (what's the performance like BTW?) doesn't mean emulation can be cracked. You've got different level of hardware use. The list of compatible titles with PCSX2 tends to show simpler, less important titles. Major players like GOW, SoTC, GT and MGS all have issues if they can run the game at all. This is what MS found with their emulation, which is a darned site easier than PS2 emulation! As there's no single way to implement games, each game can have it's own quirks that throw out the emulator. Only the most basic titles that conform to a basic engine can be run without problem.
Thus to get each game working you need either the world's greatest emulator, or per game profiles. And creating those game profiles is time consuming and costly (though I don't imagine very costly, but if you've got a few thousand titles to do...) It looks like Sony has decided to go against those profiles, and as they can't create that perfect emulator, at least by this time, they chose to declare no BC at all.
I think one concern is that BC is viewed as something that needs to support PS2 discs in the machine, which means you need to be able to emulate most games and in a good state. What Sony might well do is release download only PS2 titles on a software emulator that have been patched into the emulator. This way they can release the major titles like SotC and GOW to resell as download titles (though big downloads!) at a later date, like PSX games.
djskribbles
Legend
did you forget there are 2 SKU's? one with software BC (with a high compatibility percentage)? and until the 60GB's clear out, there is also a SKU with full hardware BC.
