They want you to have to buy a PS2 to play PS2 games. It's called milking.

the point of backwards compatibility is to try and keep system owners loyal between generations.  This is probably one of the biggest mistakes sony made this gen (among price and drought of early titles).  Say the all the ps3's were backwards compatible.  When they go buy a new game system, they could buy a ps3 and a game, but they would still be able to play their whole library of back catalog games as well.  So when a ps2 owner looks at what games they will be playing on their system, they could be playing the 1 or 2 games they bought with another system, or the 1 or 2 games they bought with the ps3 plus all their previous games.

Now, however, when a ps2 owner buys a new system, they get the system and as many other games that they buy with it and thats all they can play.  BC increases the amount of possible games played on the system by thousands. 

At least the guitar hero guitars are BC...

the problem is when you own a HDtv like my self, PS2 games look bad, but a B/C PS3 helps allot because it has a scaler which cleans things up so that it doesn't look as bad, this is why so many people actually want it, including my self.

Now I don't care if Sony released an adapter that would allow the PS3 to act like a scaler for the PS2, so you would play a PS2 game on a PS2 but the PS3 would work it's magic and clean up the image, I know it's conveluted setup, but for me something is better than nothing, and no I refuse to buy an expensive amp just to get good upscaling when the PS3 has proven in past versions that it's capable of it.

well, figure this, it now it costs $400 to buy a PS3 and PS2 instead of $500

lol, sony just can't get past that $400 figure can they

well, like I said, at least it isnt $500 anymore.