Revised PS3 hardware is a good thing!

 

In case you don't already know, on Friday 24th March, Sony announced that the European/Australasian/Middle-East/African/ release of the Playstation 3 would feature an updated hardware architecture http://threespeech.com/blog/?p=291
The original PS3 effectively had a PS2 'stapled' onto the hardware. However to reduce production costs Sony have removed the PS2 custom chips, and games will be emulated via the PS3 hardware and a potential price drop before Christmas 2007. £299 sounds a whole lot sweeter than £425. In the short term there are likely to be less PS2 games that are compatible. This has met with a bad reaction...

 

Now I definately understand this. Sony have previously stated that they would like the PlayStation platform to become be as ubiquotous as the living room TV, and they want to do this by providing a stable, compatible, standard Playstation format. And what was so great about the Playstation 2 when it was released was that it meant people didnt have to ditch their old (sometimes extensive) games collection. Not to mention the fact that there are some truly fantastic games that are still coming out on the PS2 in its sunset years including Okami, Final Fantasy XII, Gods of War II etc. Obviously Sony will go to the effort to make the megahits compatible but what about the little selling, unknown, or just plain quirky games? Will Sony bother?
Well, the plan is that Sony will make more and more PS2 games compatible via firmware updates. But unlike Microsoft who have effectively stopped bothering to make the xbox 1 games compatible, Sony have said this will be a continual process.

 

Even better is that the PS2 would upscale the graphics of PS1 games to improve their sheen. Now the PS3 via emulation has the potential to upscale PS2 games to HD levels to reduce blockiness. PS2 games upscaled to 1080p is definately a possibility and it means anybody with a shiny new HDTV gets to play PS2 games better than ever. Is this actually happening? A couple of PS3 developers have already gone on record saying this can be done on their developers kits. Fingers crossed that this will happen sooner rather than later...