3. Sony's bottom line will improve, but not directly because of the hardware alterations. This move has upset a lot of people already, which may motivate fence-sitters to get out there and pick up a PS3, or import one and have it modded simply so they don't have to deal with the uncertainty that software emulation entails.
After the initial system sellouts at launch, PS3 sales have quieted a bit, and it's not because the hardware isn't available. This announcement may also drive sales of the PS2, which continues to outsell the PS3 anyway and has always been compatible with the vast majority of PS1 games. In any event, panic for the people equals money for Sony.
4. Perhaps the biggest concern is that this move will follow suit in the other major world markets, and that a similar hardware redesign for the U.S. and Japan is on the horizon. This follows #3 in that it will likely boost sales of the existing hardware as people race to avoid having to take the more do-it-yourself route of software vs. hardware backward compatibility.
But is having to go the software route really so bad? The 8-, 16-, and 32-bit generations weren't backward compatible to anything, save for the many iterations of the Game Boy. Nobody cared much about backward compatibility until Sony made it one of their key interests to have across all of their home hardware consoles. As Ken Kutaragi said less than a year ago:
"...the PS3 will feature backwards compatibility with PS and PS2 games from day one. I'm emphasizing this because, from what I hear, there are some platforms that haven't been able to completely do this [Ed: A clear dig at Microsoft's software emulation]. It's costly in terms of hardware, but we'd rather [invest] firmly on compatibility from the beginning, rather than to have issues later on."If this is still true, Sony will need to keep a steady stream of patches coming to keep the older games playable overseas, and hopefully these updates will be free, or the effort to save the consumer money is for naught. If not, well, all good things come to an end sooner or later.
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.