Predict what Sony will announce on the 18th!

[greenmedic88]

Hardware PS2 BC is gone for good.

The EE CPU emulation meant the deletion of the EE in the original 80GB SKU, but as of now there is no GS GPU emulation and I see ZERO chance of this chip being re-engineered back onto the PS3 chipset/motherboard for the simple reason that the mobo is currently smaller and squarer (largely due to the deletion of the EE and GS), and likely due for another shrink/reduction with the next/current hardware revision.

What I can see happening down the line (no guess as to when) is that PS2 BC will return to the PS3 via PSN downloads with individually code tweaked soft BC.

What's the difference? PS2 disc games wouldn't play on non-GS equipped PS3s. Every PS2 game that SCE wants to play on later PS3s would require additional coding on an individual game basis, much like Xbox games on the Xbox 360 (only certain games were retroactively coded for BC).

While the updates could easily be downloaded, the main incentive for individually coding PS2 game compatibility would be so that they could sell the games again on PSN.

But if SCE can do GS emulation without having to recode individual games; hats off. It would be a great service for retro gamers and those who already have collections of PS2 games.

But as one of those gamers, I'd be satisfied just to see PS2 games being sold on PSN.