| greenmedic88 said: Hardware PS2 BC is gone for good. The EE CPU emulation meant the deletion of the EE in the original 80GB SKU, but as of now there is no GS GPU emulation and I see ZERO chance of this chip being re-engineered back onto the PS3 chipset/motherboard for the simple reason that the mobo is currently smaller and squarer (largely due to the deletion of the EE and GS), and likely due for another shrink/reduction with the next/current hardware revision. What I can see happening down the line (no guess as to when) is that PS2 BC will return to the PS3 via PSN downloads with individually code tweaked soft BC. What's the difference? PS2 disc games wouldn't play on non-GS equipped PS3s. Every PS2 game that SCE wants to play on later PS3s would require additional coding on an individual game basis, much like Xbox games on the Xbox 360 (only certain games were retroactively coded for BC). While the updates could easily be downloaded, the main incentive for individually coding PS2 game compatibility would be so that they could sell the games again on PSN. But if SCE can do GS emulation without having to recode individual games; hats off. It would be a great service for retro gamers and those who already have collections of PS2 games. But as one of those gamers, I'd be satisfied just to see PS2 games being sold on PSN. |
It's obvious they're working on firmware BC, and I think they'll get it working eventually. Remember, this is the company that got 99% of PS1 games working entirely via software on the PSP of all devices - at a time when PS1 games still had issues via PC emulation.
Much like with the PS1, they have a large incentive to get full PS2 BC working. First of all, so that PS2 owners have a reason to upgrade to a PS3 instead of a 360 or Wii, and secondly, so that they can easily sell PS2 games on the PSN with little to no work involved on a per title basis.
Third parties (even Sony themselves) wouldn't be so keen on porting individual PS2 titles to PS3. Just look at how the Xbox Originals dried up. The ability to do a quick and dirty transfer job on PS1 titles has lead to even crap like 2Xtreme making their way to the PSN, because it's so easy to do so. Third parties view it as easy money, and this in turn makes Sony money.
Sony definitely wants to do this, and it's apparent that they are working on this to some degree. I don't think we'll see anything on this front until next year at the earliest, however, given the difficulties of such a task, even for Sony.
Interesting note: All ps3s have ps2 BC to a degree, on a firmware level, however it is currently disabled. Info surfaced on gaf about this awhile back from a few devs that had access to this feature via devkits. However, the emulation is very mediocre, as from what I heard games ran at like 1/3rd the proper framerate, among other issues.
Edit:
I can't find the original thread on this last bit, but I can find some later references to it:
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In the flash there is one emulator for every model of ps3 out in the market. There is a file for models with EE and GS, a file for EE only models, and a file for models without any ps2 component.
