Ok, maybe I'm alone but I have been very consistent on this issue ...

Back when the XBox 360 was released I (and at the time most Sony fans) were very critical of Microsoft's "poor" implementation of backwards compatibility. One of the (obvious) lessons learned from the PS2 and GBA was that a lot of people really valued the ability to play their old games on their new system, and having backwards compatibility that didn't approach 50% was unacceptable.

When the PS3 was released Backwards Compatibility was one of the few things I congratulated Sony on; it was an overpriced system but at least it included all the necessary hardware to ensure 95%+ backwards compatibility with the PS2. Sony fans also thought this was fantastic and assumed that people who didn't own a working PS2 would buy a PS3 to play God of War 2.

When Sony dropped the Emotion Engine on the PS3 I thought it was a big mistake; the chip-size was (approximately) 1/10 what it was originally and within months they could move to a 65nm process and it would fall to (approximately) 5% of the original size [read: the chip should be dirt cheap].

Now that Sony has fully dropped backwards compatibility I thought that it was insane because they weren't going to save that much money on production and were removing one of the key features of the system.

@ lib---"GTA4 or DMC4." or you could just buy teh 360 and still get BC-oohhhhhh just kiding

but BC is an important feature to have in a counsel espicaly when other systems on the market still have that--but then again they will down talk it right now and in a few months bring it back and act like its the best thing ever *rumble cough cough*

Personally, I bought a PS3 way back in January and I would NEVER have bought it if not for BC -- and I might not have if it was only software BC. You see, I never owned a PS2 ... but there are a ton of games I want to play on it. I just never got around to making the purchase, and eventually I just decided to wait for the PS3.

"""I still think the biggest problem with removing BC is that many consumers will not know it's been removed. From what I've seen, it's very easy to miss the statement regarding BC on the box"""

+1 for FishyJoe,
it is very hard to see behind the box that "this console doesnt play PS2 games".

I still have a feeling that sony has been working on a full software emulation and if they can come out with that via a PSN update, this arguing about BC will be moot. They could have put up that warning label about it not having BC just incase it takes them a while or they end up not finding a way to truly emulate the GS chip. Time will tell whether that comes true or not, but if it does, I'll bring along a trailer full of crow for everyone slamming Sony for this choice.

I can definitely see some people defending such a measure. They'd dig out all the reports about how many people don't have broadband, etc.

I think the biggest problem with the lack of BC is the way people have viewed Sony in the past. Whereas Nintendo went from one medium to another every generation, Sony decided to do a rather unconventional thing by allowing BC. This helped titles sell from the previous generation well into the next one. They argued that this allows gamers to save space and make that back catalog worth keeping. Cue 2005, Sony comes and says they are offering near 100% BC on their PS2 titles with the PS3, and were very quick to slam Microsoft for their less than complete BC on the 360. In fact, I recall that being a very commonly used attack on the 360 by Sony all the way into late last year, maybe even this year. And then comes the 40GB, and Sony is suddenly doing a 180 on their stance on BC. Not only is this hypocritical (especially considering how often it was used to attack the competition), but it goes against the perception of the Playstation brand Sony has built up.

Imagine for a second, that you're in the market for a Honda Civic. You notice that one 2007 version is $2000 cheaper than the other. You go "Sweet, I'll take that." You drive around some and you start to notice something strange; the mileage sucks. You're getting 15 Miles Per Gallon (for non-US, that's about 6.5km/Liter), which is far below what the other model is getting. You feel betrayed. One of the expectations of getting a Civic is that it is a relatively fuel efficient vehicle. Similarly, BC is an expectation for a Playstation product at this point. To remove it betrays that expectation, and to remove it mid-gen from one SKU will piss off a decent number of the 40GB buyers.

MikeB said: @ couchmonkey release a brand-new system with a more traditional architecture (no cell and maybe no Blu-ray) Hello Gabe! Yes let's make the PS4 a cutdown PC! Drool!! Who really wants innovation, advanced features and product diversity when we can all have a cutdown console PC next to our oridinary PCs within our homes?! LOL

Well, in theory, it would be entirely possible for Sony to have worked on improving the Emotion Engine and released a 4 to 8 Emotion Engine core that was running in the 2GHz to 3GHz range which would give performance in the 25x to 80x range (as compared to the PS2); developers would be familiar with the architecture, there would be tons of well known tricks to get decent performance, backwards compatibility would be 'free' and it would be trivial to improve performance (and upscale with a similar GPU architecture) existing PS2 games.

Seriously, if Sony choose DVD and the processor I described above (with a decent GPU) they could have sold the PS3 for $300 with a minimal loss and demonstrated similar performance to the XBox 360 ... But Sony choose the architecture that was going to ensure poor sales ...