New 80GB PS3 Gives Us The Cold Shoulder

[CapAmerica]

From Wikipedia:

Removal of hardware support
In order to reduce manufacturing costs, the Emotion Engine (EE) and Graphics Synthesizer (GS) are not included in PAL or South Korean consoles. As originally planned, dedicated hardware support has since been removed from the North American and Japanese models. The new 80 GB model released in North America will also lack hardware support for legacy titles.

Software emulation is used in place of hardware support and as a result, backward compatibility for PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games is reduced. Backward compatibility is improved periodically through PlayStation 3 System Software updates, however Sony has stated that its focus will shift to developing content exclusively for the PS3.

On March 20, 2007 Sony released a compatibility list; 1,782 of the 2,451 PS2 games (72%) released in Europe had noticeable issues, minor issues or no known issues, with the remainder being incompatible with the console. In system software update v1.80, support was added for upscaling of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games when using software emulation. Upscaling can improve picture quality in some situations.