Just because BC isn't important to a lot of early adopter Sony fans doesn't mean what Sony did with the 40GB was in any way fair or well-handled. You can't fault the average person for not reading joystiq every day. Do you do go to forums for every single type of product that's a part of your life? Consumers don't "deserve" to be punished, the company/sales people do if anyone.

I've never given a shit about BC since the concept was even introduced, because I keep all old systems. The only actual use I've had for Playstation 2's BC in 6 years is that it loads MK Trilogy twice as fast.

I don't know why, but surveys indicate BC is something the average person really likes, because most people aren't big enough dorks to want 5 systems hooked up to their family TV.

Sony trumpeting for years how "the Playstation brand is so important across all products" blahblah, and then they switch it up for minimal cost per unit = BS. There were a million other less-important things to remove from the Playstation 3 if they wanted to lower costs -- like just make it a fucking GAMING + movies system.

 For every purchase? Nope :P For a $400 dollar purchase? You bet your ass. I'd at least ask the store clerk if there was a difference between the $400 and the $500 consoles. I do agree that it was a very poorly thought out move on there part, but it seemed logical as a cost cutter. The removed several other features and kept the ones they thought were most important for their business plans, PS3 games, and Blu-ray movies. 

Also note, thanks to them including the Blu-ray player, the "war" might be decided. And in the BDA's favor I might add. So as much as you may not like the fact that it's a multimedia machine, it was a fairly intelegent business move.  

For me BC is important ,but as I have the 60Gb one I am covered here .It just seems the BC isnt important for most users .Most of them have PS2 in their house ,they even have some pirated games that woulndt run on the PS3 anyway ,and just want to play PS3 games and BR movies .The PS2 space in shelves is getting thinner and the PS3 is absorbing that space .Shortly the BC issue wont be an issue anymore .Still ,I think Sony should release the 80Gb in Europe and Japan or offer some kind of software BC .I am pretty sure the PS4 will run flawlessly the PS1 ,PS2 through software and the PS3 because based on the same Cell+Nvidia GFX card+BR disc technology so they have at least to try to offer some BC for everybody this gen .Maybe the PSthree will have the emotion engine built in again who knows .

Why don't pirated PS2 games run on the PS3?

And how do you know that?

Well ,I dont know for sure but since you needed to chip the PS2 to run pirated games (I havent had a PS2 ever but this is something everybody knows ) and the PS3 cant be pirated right now it simply dont runs pirated PS2 games .Now that I remember a friend of mine tried once to put a pirated version of Buzz the Great Quiz on my 60Gb PS3 and it didnt recognize the disc .

• Amazon:

PlayStation 3 40gb Specification:

http://www.amazon.com/PlayStation-40GB-Spider-Man-Movie-Pack/dp/B000XGJH1O/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1200508626&sr=8-2

• EBgames:

*The PlayStation 3 40GB is not backwards compatible to PlayStation 2

http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=020285

Although, Walmart and Best Buy are guilty of not mentioning it on their web sites.

Wow, I did miss that. In my defense, the Amazon mention was really buried and easy to miss as the PS2 isn't even mentioned, even though they highlight the PS2 in the opening paragraph. I must just plain missed the EBGames mention, although the same thing probably happens with the average consumer.

 MS also said that HDMI, etc/ didn't matter either, yet now all 360 scome with HDMI.  I really don't see why you guys are getting so hung up on this.  I mean, all companies spin things in their favor all the time.

Now, if you don't mind, please go back to the MS forum and leave us ps3 fans alone.  You don't see me going into the MS forum and bashing the 360 for the RRoR or MS for Vista.  All this trolling is really annoying.

To be fair to Sony I found 4 different places (2 on the back then one on each side) on my 40gb box where it's states in English that this system does not run ps2 games. This including the list of all the compatible formats on the system. The reason why the print is so small is because there are 2 other languages besides English.

Not to nit pick, here, but you can't compare a company saying, "we believe as a core value of this product it should support feature X" and then dropping that feature later on, to a company saying, "we don't believe that feature Y is important for this product" and then adding the feature later on.

Saying that promoting feature X and then dropping it is the same as not promoting feature Y and then adding it isn't logical. In the first case, the company pushed something as a core value of their product and then abandoned it as a core value. In the second case, the company said it didn't believe something needed to be a core value of their product, but later added it. Yes, an argument can be made that customers of the second company might feel cheated because the later versions of the product had a feature that the company didn't include in the first versions (you can tell us pioneers by the arrows in our backs). But I would rather have that than to hear a company pontificate about how central a feature was to their product, only to buy one later and find out that feature was missing, and that I would have to disconnect everything, pack it all up, return it to the store, and *then* find out that I would have to spend another $100 to get that feature back. I would be really, really angry.

So to make sure it's not just me, I just did a random poll here at work, and 3 out of 5 adults I queried were under the assumption that all PS3s had BC. One guy even got upset and went online to prove me wrong. Oh, and we're software engineers, so we're not *complete* morons.

Well, at least not that we can tell.