Check out this link:
This is the website for PCSX2, an open-source PS2 emulator. As you can see in the screenshots there, this emulator is capable of actually rendering PS2 games at higher than their normal resolution (approx. 720p here), and they look absolutely incredible. Now why can't the PS3 do this?
I know the 1.8 update added upscaling of PS1/2 games, and that's well and good, but it's a sorry substitute for actually rendering the game's polygons at the higher resolution. All that upscaling does is stretch the 480i/p image to fit a high-def screen - polishing a turd, if you will - and I think the results reflect this.
So if a bunch of plucky basement programmers can slap together a semi-reliable emulator with this capability, what's stopping Sony, who knows the PS2's architecture inside and out? Is there some technical limitation I'm not aware of? I find that hard to believe - the guys at PCSX2 seem to think their emulator could actually run on PS3 with the right access and a lot of work. Could Sony actually have this feature in the works for a future update? Or do they think it just isn't worth the bother?
Maybe it's just me, but I would call this a system-selling feature. More than that, I'd call it more compelling than anything else the PS3 is offering right now. If you think about it, the PS3 really sells on the basis of two things: its future potential, and its PlayStation legacy (which includes the PS name and the game libraries of the past two systems). Adding hi-def options to its backwards compatibility function would be an absolutely enormous boon to the "legacy" half of the equation. So if they can do it, why isn't this a top priority?
Anybody else agree?
