With only about a month until the PlayStation 3 launches in the European market, Sony has made an announcement that has lit the message boards alight with bickering.
The key feature being removed to "cut costs" from the PS3 is hardware backward compatibility, which makes it possible to play PS1 and PS2 games on the console with no extra fiddling or downloads required. The U.S. and Japan got the hardware version of this compatibility. Europe is going to get software emulation to hopefully accomplish the same goal.
Does this sound familiar? It should. This is the same way that Microsoft has been handling compatibility for playing Xbox games on the Xbox 360. The hardware route wasn't an option for Microsoft, given that their two consoles thus far have used video hardware from rival companies. Many in the industry would consider Microsoft's enthusiasm and dedication to software emulation to be mediocre at best. It was announced pre-launch to assuage the fears of early adopters, but new releases have waned considerably over the last year as the company devotes more time and resources to developing unique content for the console.
It might not be as big of a deal if Sony hadn't maligned Microsoft at the 360 launch for doing many of the things Sony ended up doing themselves, including releasing two significantly different versions of their new console at opposing price points and now going the software emulation route for legacy compatibility.
Cost is certainly a factor for a new console launch, and finding ways to save money is important. Nothing has been announced as far as how removing the hardware backward compatibility will affect the price of the PS3 in Europe (currently slated at the equivalent of about $900). With no hard numbers to show, the heavy speculation has begun. There are a few main camps that people are vocally falling into.
1. Sony will make bold promises up front and then fail to deliver, the way Microsoft's dedication to the emulation cause has weakened over time. These people back up their arguments saying that Sony has a history of promising big things and never delivering, cases in point are shipment numbers for launch units, over inflated videos of supposed real-time graphics that ended up being completely pre-rendered, and the tepid support for the PSP and the effect it has had on handheld gaming. Sony's recent viral ad campaigns (the bogus PSP blog and PSP graffiti) haven't helped their standing with gamers, either.
2. The hardware change will actually reduce the cost of the system, but it may not be enough to justify the headaches of having to wait for and eventually download countless emulation patches. If it were going to make the system cheaper, it would be wise to release numbers on exactly by how much or in what way to settle the hackles they raised by making this move in the first place.
Article comments
1 - Ken Edwards
Nice article Mark! But I think you forgot one camp. It's the camp that is fed up with Sony and has bought an Xbox 360 and is sitting at home playing games like Gears of War and Crackdown right now.
That camp is likely lost forever to Sony.
2 - Ken Edwards
Ken Kutaragi always has the best quotes. And they always seem to bite him in the ass. Quite comical, really.
3 - Mark Buckingham
Of course, forgot about the people who are sitting back and laughing because they never wanted a PS3 in the first place.
4 - Zibaloney
Sony are Fucking crazy! full of lies and scams, im still getting a ps3 but im sure pissed off that we europeans keep ketting fucked in the ass everytime!
5 - Duey
isn't software emulation better than hardware emulation, all Sony is doing is putting ps2 parts into the ps3 to make the ps3 backwards compatible, the games from ps2 and ps1 don't look any better on the ps3, if u look at software emulation for the pc they make many console games look better on the pc, so if Sony is able make their emulator better on the ps3 then i wouldn't mind waiting for the updates
6 - gossett
if you have any respect for yourself you will not buy a ps3..why buy from a company who does not give a damn about its consumers,but will take your money by telling you lies and copying the same companies they keep blasting...sony fanboys i hope you are enjoying your soon to be useless bluray disc player.
7 - Mark Buckingham
Software emulation isn't necessarily better than hardware emulation. SE requires a program to run within a program, and typically requires the host hardware to be leaps and bounds better than the original, not to mention it's a lot more taxing on the hardware to do software emu. For instance, it takes a Pentium 3 with a clock speed 5x to 10x faster than the original SNES to make games look as nice as they do on the original hardware.
While they *may* be able to add a few twists to the display, it's not as easy as it was with the 8- and 16-bit games, where they smoothed the edges on pixilated characters. Advanced processes like Procedural Synthesis would be required to make polygonal games look much better than they did before. The PS2 and even Bleem! were really only able to anti-alias and smooth textures a little in PS1 games. It's a lot harder to improve the visual fidelity of polygon-based titles.
The other problem is that hardware emu works out of the box while software emu could take years for them to release the patch you need to play a particular game. That patch may NEVER come along. Being able to run everything the way it was has a much broader appeal than being able to play a small handful of games at slightly higher resolution. At that level, it's little more than a short-term novelty whose appeal would wear off almost immediately.
One last point...the Xbox 360 is using software decoding rather than hardware decoding for the HD-ROM accessory, similar to software vs. hardware emulation, and reports I've read say it is really hard on the system, to the point that it can't do anything else while playing a HD-DVD.
8 - Andrew Ogier
You got one thing wrong in your article. Sony isn't cutting the costs for the consumer, but for themselves, there has been no price cut announced since the news.. Therefore Sony are screwing europe so that they can get an extra £42 per system.
9 - Mark Buckingham
Sony justified their move as "cutting costs" and the implication (or perhaps the desired inference) was that these savings would be passed on to consumers. Generally that's what happens when a company does something to lower manufacturing costs. That's why I said they need to explain these "savings" better. I realize they probably don't care about the customers anymore, what with such an established and popular brand.
10 - Ken Edwards
Yea Mark, you forgot rule number 1: Sony loves has a thing for screwing over Europe, it always has -- sorry Andy.
But you imported your PS3, so you didn't get a gimped one.
11 - Mark Buckingham
The other implication--as I saw it at least--was that lowering costs was the trade-off for cutting hardware b/c. Cheaper hardware was mentioned in opposition as a PLUS for consumers vs. the thing they'd be losing.
Or at least that's what Sony's marketing department wants you to think.
12 - Andrew Ogier
Of course, there's the whole "Emotion Engine makes PS2 a computer, therefore we should be exempt from import tax un Europe" side story which they want to brush under the carpet, put a positive spin on, and pretend that they're actually doing it for the consumer.
Mark my words, With the removal of Emotion Engine and the inclusion of Linux on PS3, watch Sony try to bend the rules and try to get PS3 classified as a computer in the UK...at the expense of utterly ripping off their European customers.
Apparently not even Final Fantasy XII (released last week) works on a retail UK PS3.
13 - Pudge man
Xbox 360 ..... Not to intavative.. like always ms has once again.. done nothing and just bought from other companys and once again.. it sux.. Yes it sux.. How many first person shooters do u guys need... Seriously.. its pathetic.. halo is the only one I like.. thats it.. GOW.. so what.. Unreall will be the same.. and crack down is grand theft auto.. Man.. Atleast when sony makes a product it designed from sony and partners.. and not bought.. it has its own genoius to it like my spelling . Now the wii.. Theres a product.. Ladies and gentlemen.. Dont buy xbox 360.. it comes from the same place as vista.. does.. and we know ms always has issues with there software....
14 - Ken Edwards
What would we do without blind fanboys?
15 - REAPER
I have a PS3 and when I used it with my old PS2 and PSOne games out of the box they worked perfectly so really I could care less what type of emulation is used. If it works... use it.
Hardware will mean more stable compatibility though updates will be provided by software patches and BIOS updates. Won't be updated as much but it will work better and cost the system less resources.
Software will be fully updated by rewrites of the program. It may not be as stable and will require more CPU power and special drivers to offload things to the RSX GPU.
Personally whatever works best for Sony is fine by me. My games work. I'm happy. So therefore I have no complains to make.