@darthdevidem

==> I completely agree, they needed it so much

I just hope PES2008 will good on PS3,
If it is the case, the bundle should sell very well

@dtewi

who cares now

Does anyone BELIEVE SONY anymore, no

so why are we saying the same things again and again

we have KNOWN they spew out garbage

Everyone know they did it to reduce costs, let them say whatever they want now

COST IS DOWN....end of

that was the point

You want BC? Buy a 60/80GB model. You don't have money? Don't buy it. Wait for it to be cheaper. Bragging about it won't make the 40GB PS3 magically BC. :P

drkohler said: libellule said: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=29509 Any claim that this has been done for cost purposes is clearly false, because the European PS3 already emulated its predecessors in software. Some legacy chips remained on-board (but not the central processor, the Emotion Engine), but their cost is unlikely to have been much more than a dollar or two per unit - if even that. ==> feel free to comment. LOL, a good waver chip costs you $10'000 and is probably good for 350-500 "some legacy" chips (depending on structure size). Talk about not saving... I wish these "experts" would actually at least try to understand a little bit about what they are foaming about.. wishful thinking, I know.. these idiots seem to grow on trees nowadays.

You apparently don't have any clue what you are talking about, either. A 12" wafer can easily hold a crapload of legacy die. I don't know the size of the playstation 2 GSX chip, but the Wii CPU which is easily as more more powerful is 19 square millimeters. Using basic math for the area of a circle, we find the formula pi*r^2 for a 300MM wafer (modern manufacturing is standard on 12" or 300MM) being a total square millimeter surface area of 70,685 MM. Divide 19 into that result and you find approximately 3720 total die. Assume a 90% yield and you get 3348 usable chips from one wafer. $9000 is a good rough estimate of the cost to manufacture a 12" wafer putting the GSX chip at about $3 each in quantity. The cost is so negligble as to prove that Sony cut every possible corner to cut costs and that there are other motives in the move to remove BC completely. Keep in mind, too, that I used the size of the Broadway graphics chip on the Wii as my size estimate. I would be willing to bet that the GSX in the PS2 is smaller still which would mean an even higher yield....

Could it be Sony is trying to increase the attach rate so 3rd parties get back on board? Who knows...

Backwards Compatibility as a Luxury Feature?

Does that seem backwards to anyone else?

There are lots of people like me who like to keep my gaming budget under wraps and right now that means that I can dig through the bargin bins, or buying platnium sellers, which end up being (primarily) Gamecube, Gameboy Advance and other older system's games; garage sales are also good sources of inexpensive games but they are primarily older games.

Now, a person who is going to spend $600 for a game system is probably not going to be the same person who is going to be digging though Wallmart's bargin bins next to some grubby teenager; this means that for the people who are willing to spend the money the feature is worthless, and the people the feature has value are probably not going to pay for the feature.

Well for me, Wii owner, it is another push in the direction of 360 as a second console. I love my PS2 games, and in case my PS2 breaks down I think backward comp is really important.
That combined with the unimpressive games and high price and the great games for 360 will probably let me decide to not play the next FF (one of my most favorite series).

There are probably a lot of gamers like me who love Nintendo but want a console next to it. This can be a lot of people and 360 is doing very good to serve them, with Fable, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssee, Viva Pinata (not the shooter-only-fest Xbox was).

kn said: drkohler said: libellule said: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=29509 Any claim that this has been done for cost purposes is clearly false, because the European PS3 already emulated its predecessors in software. Some legacy chips remained on-board (but not the central processor, the Emotion Engine), but their cost is unlikely to have been much more than a dollar or two per unit - if even that. ==> feel free to comment. LOL, a good waver chip costs you $10'000 and is probably good for 350-500 "some legacy" chips (depending on structure size). Talk about not saving... I wish these "experts" would actually at least try to understand a little bit about what they are foaming about.. wishful thinking, I know.. these idiots seem to grow on trees nowadays.   You apparently don't have any clue what you are talking about, either. A 12" wafer can easily hold a crapload of legacy die.....

My numbers are certainly outdated and based on numbers actually known (old pentiums and yield numbers). I very much doubt that the GS has any fault tolerancy built in and is produced on top knotch die processors (the chips in the US pictures of a PS3 board look like old fashioned large die EE/GS PS2 chips). And contrary of what you might think about clues, I do have some so let's leave it at that. Even if we get over 1000 dies out of a waver, that's still over $10 savings  per PS3.

all they need to do is recode their entire software emulation for PS2 games then they could put BC back into the 40GB PS3. Thats an easy task.. not.

If backwards compatibility is a luxury, wouldn't that mean the Wii would be the Aston Martin of the video game industry since it play all gamecube games, and with vc you got n64, snes, nes, genesis, tg16, and neogeo? Which would be weird cause its priced like Hyundai.

drkohler said: kn said: drkohler said: libellule said: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=29509 Any claim that this has been done for cost purposes is clearly false, because the European PS3 already emulated its predecessors in software. Some legacy chips remained on-board (but not the central processor, the Emotion Engine), but their cost is unlikely to have been much more than a dollar or two per unit - if even that. ==> feel free to comment. LOL, a good waver chip costs you $10'000 and is probably good for 350-500 "some legacy" chips (depending on structure size). Talk about not saving... I wish these "experts" would actually at least try to understand a little bit about what they are foaming about.. wishful thinking, I know.. these idiots seem to grow on trees nowadays.   You apparently don't have any clue what you are talking about, either. A 12" wafer can easily hold a crapload of legacy die..... My numbers are certainly outdated and based on numbers actually known (old pentiums and yield numbers). I very much doubt that the GS has any fault tolerancy built in and is produced on top knotch die processors (the chips in the US pictures of a PS3 board look like old fashioned large die EE/GS PS2 chips). And contrary of what you might think about clues, I do have some so let's leave it at that. Even if we get over 1000 dies out of a waver, that's still over $10 savings  per PS3.

Just to point something out ... The Emotion Engine used a 0.25 Micron (250nm) and if we were to create it today we would use a 90nm process which would reduce it to (approximately) 12% of its original size.