Does getin' rid of BC really saves them that much money in terms of manufacturing? So if Wii got rid of GC compability it would be much cheaper?


I think they've done it for reasons such us boosting PS3 software sales, and keeping PS2 sales up.

Exactly my reasoning behind not getting another PS3, I had a 40gig PS3 /w Backwards compatiability. When I got it, I broomed my old PS2 in favor of the latest and greatest. However my 40gig broke on me and sony wouldn't repair it, so I could buy a new one yes. I can get a 80gig PS3 without the backwards compatibility, but that means I would need to buy another PS2. Which means in my livingroom I would have this setup. PS3, PS2, Xbox 360, Wii, DVDR-Player, Blu-Ray player, Shaw-Digital Box. Thats what, 7 imputs? Plus my PC imput as well? Thats ALOT of cables hiding behind my wall, thus I take whatever steps to reduce the amount of cables.

P.S To be fair however, I'll broom the Blu-ray player if I do get a PS3 again. I picked up a cheapy Sony BDR-S350 to replace the PS3 as a blu-ray device when the PS3 broke down.

The Wii doesn't use Gamecube chips for BC. The Wii's CPU and GPU are backwards compatible, so they can run Wii games as well as GC games.

There's some cost to BC on the Wii but it's probably very small... I can't see any special costs other than the controller ports which are probably very cheap.

Hmh 4 guys from Finland at same thread arguing about Ps2 and Ps3 price.

like most people have said, sony removed it to save money that they already have. sony makes billions of dough each year so i don't know why they need to want to save a few quarters in the expense of devaluing their precious ps3 and without backward compatibility for me personally i cant really justify the $399 price tag for blu ray players cost less nowadays, yes it has built in wifi that of which most people don't need so why not also  x'd that on top of the bc and reduce the ps3 significantly therefore why not make at least one ps3 without wifi/bc/ and no usb/card readers and in addition use cheaper plastic and make it smaller so the ps3 will cost less. dam i'm a genius.

I think it's fair to say the Wii is an enhanced GameCube.

The costs associated to BC would be more the inclusion of the controller ports/ memory card slots.

I could see a future Wii without the GC slots (a la DSi with no GBA slot)

Indeed, hardware wise the Wii is an evolution of the Gamecube according to what I've read. It is a quite smart way of getting BC almost for free, and I can see Sony and MS doing a similar thing in the next gen to get BC.

Interestingly the 360 also has quite good BC without being an evolution of the Xbox, but I put that down to two reasons:

- The architecture of the Xbox is cleaner and therefore easier to emulate than the PS2 (a PC like architecture should be easier to emulate than the whole gob of simultaneously running cores and DSPs the PS2 has).

- The 360 is just very powerful so it can emulate many Xbox games without too much effort.

In any case, 360's approach doesn't come near the Wii's which can run virtually all GC games.

I originally thought the guts added to much to the cost of the ps3. now however after going over financials I think it was taken out to boost sales of the ps2 which is a much bigger cash cow then prior thought to be. this was done so that sony could lessen the blow of the ps3s cost until it was broght into line. I expect the ps2 BC to reapear in the next year or so with ps2 sales dieing down unless sony cuts the price of the ps2 to sub 90 dollars which would spur one last hurra and give the ps3 more time to try and get other costs associated under control

Ah that answers everything, it shows that this generation Ninty have been spot on with their decisions, many people have discovered GC titles with the Wii since they never onwed that little brick called GC.

@KillerMan: Verkkokauppa does import a lot of stuff, i don't know about PS3, but i'd assume it does that due to the price.

@NJ5: I'd say that emulating CISC code with RISC architecture isn't easy, but in PS3:s case, PS2 had higher bandwidth in its VRAM, which makes software based emulation a little harder.