Sony Euro PS3 fire storm mostly in the media

The Inquirer is one of my favorite sites, and Charlie Demerjian one of my favorite writers, so it was with some interest that I read his story on 'Sony Euro PS3 debacle risks a major fire storm', an article worth reading.

 

In it, Demerjian explains that one of the "fundamental tenets" of games console design is that the platform remains the same over its lifespan, and that any changes are never made to ensure compatibility over the console's lifespan.

 

After all, one change or bug fix here or there could cause a raft of games to stop working on certain models, something that Demerjian says has never happened before with a games console.

 

But that's funny – I remember the PS2 getting a much slimmer case and newer electronics inside, and from memory, there were some older PS2 games that paid the price and wouldn't run, or wouldn't run properly on the newer PS2 models. What complaint there was about this was soon forgotten. Even the original Playstation (PS1) had improvements over the years, causing, once again from memory, minor problems of the same nature.

 

At the moment, it is fashionable in the media to be bashing Sony for all its perceived and real ills, from exploding batteries to rootkits to PS3 delays, and now, the removal of the hardware PS2 'emotion engine' chipset from European, Australian, Middle Eastern and African PS3 models, said to save Sony US $27 per console from here on in.

 

The expectation is that Sony will also remove this functionality from future PS3's destined for the US and Japanese markets, although this has not been confirmed.

 

But Sony are promising that the console will still play many PS2 games, and says they will publish a list after the March 23 'rest of the world' launch, and will continue updating firmware to ensure that more PS2 games work with the PS2 software compatibility the new PS3 models will have to rely on. Sony are being criticized for not releasing this list now, especially after people have paid good pre-order money and are getting a different product to the one they expected when placing their orders.

 

And yes, Sony has done a bad thing to consumers expecting excellent PS2 compatibility to save $27 per PS3. But Sony has stated that the future for the PS3 is in PS3 games and digital media experiences. It is not in running PS2 games. Given that the PS2 is expected to outsell the PS3 in 2007 and 2008, new PS2 games are sure to continue arriving.

 

Any super-mega blockbuster games might just have to be tweaked by Sony to run on the PS3 as well as they do on the PS2. Sony will also likely be ensuring that any mega-blockbuster type games will also be available in a much more advanced PS3 version.

 

The whole PS2 and PS3 compatibility issue is certainly a mess that Sony should have handled much, much better, after promising an inbuilt chipset that would mean a PS2 built-in to every PS3 as standard.

 

They've changed their tune to save $27 per console and are paying the price right now with bad publicity. There's certainly a big fire storm in the media about this issue, but in the long term, it will be but a blip on the radar.

 

Sony's strategy is clear: the PS3 is the games console of the future, and most of Sony's focus will be aimed in this direction. Sony can't lose the next-gen race and are betting the company on the PS3. It's a bet I think they'll win, even if others in the media don't.

 

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