Borkachev said: This is worrying news. I'm not sure it's a sign of things to come in NA though, because Japan is a very unique region. The 60gb/20gb models there were still using full hardware backwards compatibility, making them quite a bit more expensive to produce. The 80gb, on the other hand, costs almost the same as the 40gb (the EE chip is $30 at most) but sells for $100 more. So it actually probably has the highest profit margin of any PS3 model, and it would only lose Sony money to drop it. (There's also the 65nm chipset in the 40gb to consider, but any new 80gb models made from now on will use the same process). I hope this is only the first step towards introducing the 80gb model to Japan, and not the start of a global discontinuation of backwards compatible models everywhere. That would piss me off to no end. By the way, is the 40gb really the only model available in Europe now? I know they claimed that was their plan, but can you really not find a 60gb anymore?

I remember a thread about a recent interview in which someone from Sony (SCEE) said that the 40 GB model would be the only one available worldwide.

Regarding Europe, from what I've heard it's almost impossible to find a 60 GB system in most countries now. Some small stores may have a few boxes sitting there, but that's it.

 

Kyros said: "and make the BC via software emulator that you can buy on the PSN..." They do that for the PS1 games but doing it for PS2 games is hard to almost impossible the PS2 graphic chip had a very high data throughput so emulating it on the PS3 CPU could be hard and the graphic cards may not flexible enough to emulate the completely different PS2 graphic card. This is different to the XBOX which used DirectX compatible graphic cards for both consoles. Its not impossible (I have heard about a PS2 emulation on PC don't know how well that worked) but pretty hard.

PS2 emulation isn't perfect, but it works fairly well and supports high rez, AA, AF, ect.

The problem with Sony making software BC for the PS3 is motivation. It shouldn't be as hard for them to create an emulator as what home coders have done since they have access to all the documentation, but it could still be tricky and costly.

sieanr said: Kyros said: "and make the BC via software emulator that you can buy on the PSN..." They do that for the PS1 games but doing it for PS2 games is hard to almost impossible the PS2 graphic chip had a very high data throughput so emulating it on the PS3 CPU could be hard and the graphic cards may not flexible enough to emulate the completely different PS2 graphic card. This is different to the XBOX which used DirectX compatible graphic cards for both consoles. Its not impossible (I have heard about a PS2 emulation on PC don't know how well that worked) but pretty hard. PS2 emulation isn't perfect, but it works fairly well and supports high rez, AA, AF, ect. The problem with Sony making software BC for the PS3 is motivation. It shouldn't be as hard for them to create an emulator as what home coders have done since they have access to all the documentation, but it could still be tricky and costly.

Not just that, but they'd have to implement it with higher quality than those PC emulators, in which no one will care much if there are some glitches.

 

is the 80 GB ps3 fully backwards compatible?

^^The only one to be fully BC is 60GB also the 20GB is fully BC I believe.
80GB is almost fully BC
and 40GB isn't.

The other huge advantage they have over the PC home coders, though, is that they only have to worry about a single hardware configuration. PC emulators have to adapt to thousands of different setups, and something that works perfectly on the programmer's home PC might not work at all on someone else's.

Even if Sony has the desire though, I wonder how long it would take. I've been amazed at the length of time they've taken to get features they promised into the firmware... this stuff apparently takes more time than I would have ever guessed

@ Nick

Christmas is over for two weeks now and it's still selling well...

Mummelmann said: johnlucas said: Lingyis said: this is important why? give me your reasons JL. It was just a news story I saw last night before I was going to sleep. I came here to see if anybody was talking about it and when I didn't see a topic I added it. Discontinuing a model is somewhat big news, don't you think? John Lucas I think it's only natural to discontinue the lower spec'ed models as the price of manufacturing the higher spec'ed ones plummets. Everyone's gain, really.

Isn't the 60 gig model the highest speced model?

I mean, if i've got a computer that plays DVDs and SD cards, vs a computer that just plays DVDs but it's HD is bigger.  I'm saying the first one is higher speced. 

Well with the phasing out of both 20gb and 60gb in Japan, I don't think you'll see that pricedrop anytime soon haha. PS3 might be $400 for quite awhile. That or the 80gb will come down to $400 and then the 40gb will be phased out everywhere and then all you'll have is 80gb.

So confusing haha. Couldn't they have just made this simple. But this pretty much shows that Sony is looking to keep the price low in hopes to keep sales up as they are and keep them in the game. Which definetly shows a sign of no pricedrop for awhile. I don't know if that's good or bad but whatever.

But this is Japan, which pretty much is becoming a monopoly under Nintendo, so you might see Sony take extreme measures there because of that.

Why would anyone really care to play ps2 games on the ps3 anyways? That would be like driving a tank to the grocery store. Plus for the price of the 80gb you could almost buy a 40gb and a thin light Ps2.