PS3 Fanboy

Our friends over at Engadget sat down to talk with SCEA CEO Jack Tretton, who questioned him about things on just about every PS3 owner's mind. Regarding backwards compatibility, Tretton saw the lack of it as a way to cut production costs, and even though implementing BC isn't particularly expensive, the company wants to be "selling PS2 software to PS2 customers, and selling PS3 software to PS3 consumers." He does express some hesitation about this though. "I would like to have had it in there, but Sony's collective strategy determined we could afford to lose it. We've now gone down that road, and we're not going back."

With the new PS Store video service, some were dismayed to find that their video purchases could not be transferred to anything except for their PSP. Tretton feels this is absolutely necessary and that it " is way too hard a business to make money in to allow people to own multiple copies for the price of one." He's "all for allowing an individual consumer having the freedom to do with their content what they want," but Sony has no plans to remove the current restrictions.

As for Home, the problems are arising because of "the disconnect of when Sony took Home out of the creative minds and put it the hands of business minds..." Tretton would rather have Home ready at a much later time with good content, than open it now as "some ghost town." Read the rest of it here.

If you've been a particularly astute PS3Fanboy reader, you may remember a long, long, long time ago (by that we mean the PS3's launch) when we linked you to Sony's official backwards compatibility list. Well, it's time to remind everyone who's been grabbing 80GB PS3's without the Emotion Engine that they need to check out their compatibility too, as a lot of us are still playing enough PS2 games to survive the soon-ending game drought.

The new compatibility list is here and it's pretty comprehensive, as we would expect. If you want to check on how Metal Gear Solid works, go for it. The only issues lie in Snake Eater, where there's some awkward slowdown and prior to the 1.92 update, you had some trouble saving the game. If you can handle some slowdown, the game should play ... relatively normal. Feel free to investigate your favorite games and post a comment here saying what strange or unusual errors you find!

...Sony wasn't lying. Over at the official backwards compatibility site for the PS3, choosing your country is probably the hardest part. Nearly 1,800 of the 2,400 PS2 games have been deemed backwards compatible with software emulation. Not only that, every PS-One title will work also. If that's not worth a collective sigh of relief, then what is? Some people may have thought "oh, only one-thousand games?" but didn't realize that there weren't even 2,500 PS2 titles. Personally, I thought there were a lot more.

In any case, it's safe to say that all of our favorite games will work via software emulation after the 1.60 firmware update on Thursday. If some of them don't for some reason, chances are they're in the line for an HD-upgrade emulation. Sucks, but hey, it might just be worth it. Seeing Shadow of the Colossus in 720p would be quite breathtaking -- not that the game wasn't before. So, reactions? Opinions?

[via Eurogamer]

We're referring to a decreased percentage in the European PlayStation 3's ability in respect to backwards compatibility. How awkward of a sentence was that? Let us explain before the poo gets tossed around. See, the model being released in Europe was designed differently... instead of having a chip run backwards compatible games like in the current US and Japanese models, backwards compatibility will be taken care of solely by software. We imagine that old games will have trouble, but those released in the past year or so should be A-OK.

Analyst Alex Kwiatowski had this to say: "I'm as disappointed as the next game player about the reduced backward compatibility, but even the most nostalgic, misty-eyed gamers will have their steely hearts impressed by the new features that PS3 games provide." Not only will the games impress, but this new model of PS3 has improved sound and graphics capabilities to stir up interest. There weren't any specifics, but guys, you might want to keep your PS2 and plug it into a small TV or something. Mine's upstairs, but is getting very little use.

[also available in Joystiq flavor!]

[update: fixed a wonky sentence. Or tried to.]

[update 2: CVG has an update on the situation -- check it out!]

We're calling this a semi-fix because not everybody has their television set up like I do (in Athens, not at home... this one rocks out with HDMI and such). A while back, we did a short investigation on the YouTube video claiming PS2 games look a lot worse on the PS3 -- in my particular case, it appears to be true. Kind of. Yes, there are a lot more jaggies and oh, goodness, the text is atrocious. There is, however, light at the end of this tunnel. I'll tell you how my TV's set up to quickly repair the damaged graphics.

All right, so currently my PS3 is connected to my TV via the HDMI and those cruddy composite cables -- the yellow, white, and red. Why both? Because my TV has channels dedicated to both. When I run a PS2 game on the HDMI channel, yeah, it looks bad. So what do I do? Go to my Display Settings and swap the PS3 back onto the 480i channel -- the channel most PS2 games were probably meant to be seen in. I think that's the problem -- PS2 games didn't plan on getting their resolutions increased so drastically. Anyway... so I swap it back to 480i and re-load the PS2 game and guess what? The text is gorgeous and the graphics look fine. I think. They don't look perfect, but it's a lot better than the HDMI shows.

You guys can go ahead and test this if your TV is prepared for the journey of multiple wires. Or computer monitor, which I know a lot of you swear by (and rightly so, it seems)! Let us know if this works for you. In all seriousness, though, it doesn't bother me that much. If I can still enjoy the gameplay, I don't mind having a jaggy sword, or funny-looking handrails. Perhaps Sony will strive to fix this in the future, but for now, keep your PS2 hooked up if it gets too unbearable.

[update: As I continue to screw around with different games, if you crack out any 2D-centric titles (Atelier Iris 2 in my case), the graphics actually look better with HDMI. The backgrounds have a few splotchy points, but the sprites are much, much sharper.]

This is becoming ridiculously controversial and we simply can't ignore a chance to let the 360 fanboys who inexplicably come here day after day vent their frustrations on our system. We do that because we love you too, even if you don't love us, oh alpha male gamers. Assert your superiority by stepping on us, go ahead! Anyway, all sarcasm aside, there has been a lot of cinematography and screenshottery depicting insanely bad resolution/graphical issues with a wide number of PS2 games played on the PS3. The video is on YouTube -- the "oh, wow" moment for me came about two minutes and twenty seconds in -- when the screen is split on Tidus' face (from Final Fantasy X).

Some say that the first batch o' PS3's are the ones with this issue, some say it's completely random, some say it's all PS3's and still others claim that it's the TV's being played on. It's apparently not the TV, or the cables, or the games themselves. It's the system. But is it all the systems? We're handing out our junior detective badges to all our super-sleuth readers to check your systems with the games mentioned on the original thread or the games on the video.

Are you ready? Let's begin the investigation... and if it's a truly unanimous issue, Sony, we know you don't read this site, but by golly, this can be fixed with a firmware update. Please?

[thanks MiKE and/or Slurrey!]

Hot on the heels of our prior post about issues the PS3 is having with some PS2 titles, Sony has given an unofficial response and then a more official response, with no official solution set in stone as of yet. Japan's Cnet.com has compiled a list of about 196 PS2 titles that have some glaring problems (this does, however, count multiple versions of the same game -- greatest hits, special edition, etc) ranging from sound issues to games freezing up. IGN contacted Sony and here's what went down.
First off, let's go over what Sony's PR department said. Let it be known that this person was probably, or should be, fired. Even though Sony generally says stuff this arrogant. Anyway. The PR rep said that Sony expected from the get-go to be less than 100% with backwards compatibility. What is there right now is good enough, said the rep, and some people can put up with playing games that lack sound. Should be fired. Rude. Now for Sony's semi-official response. Sony says they will begin fixing the issues with system updates, perhaps even resorting to patches for individual titles that are particularly difficult. No date yet on these updates. Expect them soon enough.

This list, found on the NeoGAF forums (#24), is in fact so huge that we're not even going to try to recycle it onto here. Our job isn't to spam you with some familiar titles and a ton of Japanese titles, rather to let you know that there is apparently an issue or two with the backwards compatibility feature of the PS3. What kind of issue? Pretty much the same thing that plagued certain PSX games when used in the PS2. If the game's 2-D, you might get a little box surrounding your character. One of note is Valkyrie Profile which sports some audio errors, but it had them with the PS2. So it's nothing new.

Any troubles with major titles will probably get fixed in firmware updates, so take this with a grain of salt -- it's not a big deal. The one big deal many might complain about is the fact that PS2 HDD games (read: Final Fantasy XI) aren't yet supported. That'll probably change, too. Updates, updates, updates. We'll probably see a lot of them regarding backwards compatibility in the coming months/years. But then again, do you really care if a piece of music doesn't playback instantly/properly sometimes in a game that isn't necessarily a symphony to your ears? It shouldn't have to be an issue, but it's something that could be easy to live with, should updates fail to address the issue. Just keep a spare PS2 in case you really can't stand a problem that may arise.