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?

Isn't it legal to mod your PS3?

There are catches, but you are legally allowed to modify your PS3. You void your warrenty and can't go on PSN anymore, but modding a PS3 is prefectly legal.

Unfortunately not in the US. Any circumvention of protection devices, no matter how trivial, violates the DMCA.

What's illegal is downloading ROMs of games you don't own. If you own the game, then a ROM is a legal backup, otherwise it's an illegal pirated copy.

Legal grey area. Format shifting in the US and UK is probably not allowed. Just because you own a disk copy doesn't mean you bought the rights to own an electronic copy. Legal backup refers to a single copy of the same format that is just that: backup. You can't use the backup to do stuff with like it's a full copy.

I dunno, I think that's what it's like in Canada.

Perhaps I am still tired and thus not able to read properly but I didn't find anything on the site? I only could find PS2Classics Gui.

Despite what I said, the laws are stupid and both modding and format shifting should be allowed.

None of that would hold up in the Supreme Court. All it would take is one citizen's lawsuit and those laws would be deemed unconstitutional.

PS2Classics GUI is more a proof of concept for decrypting then encrypting an already working PSN classic package (freely available package in encrypted form), even decrypted, it still needs a license to activate, which is not provided with the software.

There's a guide by a person called CaptainCPS-X, it's a bit sketchy but works easy enough, it does it's thing by using the "shell" of a genuine PS2 classic (including it's encryption key), any PS2 ISO can then be encrypted using the encryption key (activation data) that pairs with the genuine PS2 classic, before doing this a small program is used to patch the end of the ISO with some metadata that all genuine PS2 Classics have so the PS3 emulator doesn't reject it, this includes the size of the ISO, whether it is DVD or CD ISO. The title ID is then changed in param.sfo to tally with the product code of the injected PS2 ISO, it is then repackeged and can be installed as any person would do a normal PS2 classic (but only on custom firmware 4.30 as you can't install packages since firmware 3.55 and above on official firmware). Then the encryption key is activated seperately on the PS2 using a seperate piece of homebrew making this game fully activated on a per console basis.

That's it in laymans terms, of course that's an explanation of how it works - not how to do it per say, I don't want to violate any rules here :)

I'll just say that Final Fantasy X looks damn good, much better than on the PS2 with smoothing on (and even with it off) and the frame rate on that game is higher than on an original PS2! All games seem to run, some have frame rate problems/the odd graphical glitch exactly as they would on PCSX2, not quite as pretty but much closer to PCSX2 than a PS2). Turning smoothing off seems to make pretty much any game (I've tested 15 since making the OP) run at full speed.

Just to note, the above is all my observations of the emulator and how it all works generally, I'll say it again - I'm not getting into the piracy side of things, I'm not encouraging anyone to do this, I'm not slagging Sony off for a business decision and I'm not giving any specific advice on how to make this work. It's just damn fun messing around with stuff like this.

Hacked PS3?

Well this is pointless :/