You might not believe it but the current emulator Sony uses for PS2 Classics on PSN has just been opened up for people with hacked PS3s to finally support ALL PS2 retail disks, compatibility was expected to be patchy but it seems people have already got top tier graphical games working perfectly with no slowdown (Final Fantasy X). I've done a couple myself, MegaMan X8 working perfect as was as Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2.

This is NOT using any BC hardware - it's a purely software emulator that runs on PS3 slims and fats, and is what powers "PS2 Classics"

Check out ps3hax.net for those interested.

It looks like around 70-90% of all PS2 games will be fully functioning.

I'm a regular on ps3hax and help out a fair bit and when this dropped a few days ago people were expecting an abysmal compatibility rate, of around 20% or less, now it seems that this is a fully functioning emulator...

Why hasn't it, and why isn't it being released?

this has been known since 07 when Eu ps3 played disk ps2 games w/o HW emulation

why is in not in the newer models my quess so sony can get easy $$ on psn from ps2 classics much like theyve done from ps home

Isnt this illegal?

EU 60GB BC PS3s still have the original GPU or CPU (it's missing one of them but has the other). US BC consoles have both (CPU + GPU of the PS2)

Slims etc don't have either.

It's not been working since '07 - This is a new thing since Sony added a proper fully working software emulator that PS2 classics use that makes no use of any legacy hardware at all...

Hence running on slims :)

It's discussion.

Yeah, they just cut out the software side of things so they could pad the cost of current gen development with "HD Collections" and the like. Of course now they're doing trilogies of current gen games too, now, but... -_-

I'm just shocked that they have a fully working PS2 emulator running at full speed for the likes of FFX and so forth.

Pretty amazing considering it only has access to 256MB RAM.

PCSX2 needs a monster of a machine to run well (with admittedly better AA and so on).

HD collections don't run on the emulator, only PS2 classics do.

So you want people to hack there PS3's to play PS2 games? I don't get it, why would anyone bother with this?

Sadly probably just to sell you PS2 classics. I'm fine with PS2 classics being in the store so that people can buy the games that never had them before. I would like for Sony to put this in a firmware update for discs to be playable. Hell, I'd even pay a small sumfor it (really just "unlocking" the discs since the emulator is there already seemingly).

It'd be cool if PS2 classics were Vita compatible (maybe via Gaikai? Natively would be nice) then I may actually buy some on the store.