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JimmyDanger on 01 January 2013
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pezus said:
JimmyDanger said:
I live in a PAL territory. I can only speak of personal experience/opinion in this matter.

I know that if PS3 launched in 06 with hardware BC - I'd have bought one at launch for AUD$995 - still I paid AUD$695 for the PSX at launch and wasn't worried.

The six months wait wasn't so bad, and in Australia, was kind of expected- the removal of hardware BC was a MASSIVE slap in the face. Especially since I'd bought one of those new fangled LCD HDTV's in 2006 and couldn't connect my PS2 to it without buying new fangled cables.

Removing a feature that is key to your established user base upgrading - in your largest market showed me how much they wanted my business.

They didn't remove it completely though! I remember playing Ratchet and Clank 3 on mine


Hardware BC - the one thing PS3 unarguably hands down did better than 360 at launch - if you lived in NA/JPN. And was top bullet point in the PS3/360 advantages/disadvantages.Full software support vs a list of a few hundred emulation supported titles.

Hardware BC - not limited library emulation like the 360 had. And the PS3's software emulation had less titles supported than 360 - and bugs were rife. That ended up being taken away anyway - while funnily enough - it's the 360 that supports more 6th gen titles now. Although supporting more than zero isn't hard.

Like I said - to yank out that emotion engine that cost around $20 - for a unit I'd be paying AUD$995 for (and indeed all us PAL territories pay a premium over our NA counterparts - but that's cool - if we're basically not getting gimped hardware too.

That they expected their PS2 library loyals to upgrade to PS3 at that cost  - without even giving us the opportunity other territories and gimping the motherboard -  was a huge slap in the face. Like I said before - I bought a PSX at launch (for $695AUD - I think I was earning $10 an hour working retail back in 95) - I'd supported them for launches, bought a ton of software for 12 years (95-07).

As a PAL gamer for 30+ odd years - it's the biggest regional hardware gimping slap in the face I can recall. The only thing that comes close was when Nintendo borked the component out ports of PAL Gamecubes. Though I cared less about that because a) I didn't have a component capable TV til around when 360 was launched - and b) I DID have a ton of PS2 games that I had to play still (mostly unsupported)  , most of which were bettr than launch PS3 games - and limited room under the TV with a 360 and Wii there already to have to keep a PS2 AND a PS3 there.

So - more on topic - if the OP means if it launched globally and had hardware BC - and wasn't more than AUD$995 for the 60gb/hardware BC model - It would have sold one more unit to me at launch at least. Maybe more. Probably quite a few PS2 owners wouldn't have dragged their feet.