November 13, 2006 - Yesterday, we shared with you a quickly compiled list of PS2 titles that were, according to a database accessible at the official Japanese PlayStation.com site, causing problems when being played on the PlayStation 3. We only looked for the biggest games and found a list that wasn't too long. But the full list of problematic titles is apparently quite hefty. Japan's Cnet.com reports backwards compatibility problems for over 196 PlayStation 2 titles. This figure counts multiple versions of the same game (budget versions, limited editions, etc.) as a single entity and includes the full range of problems, from simple sound issues to more dramatic freezing issues. In response to these issues, Sony's PR department pointed out that it, from the start, expected backwards compatibility to be less than 100%. It was also good enough to point out that some people can put up with playing games that lack sound. Regardless of this somewhat arrogant response, an official statement issued at the PlayStation.com site states that Sony will fix the problems with a future system update, and may even resort to individual patches for certain titles. When this will happen has yet to be specified. Source: IGN
I don't see it as a major problem, as no doubt the problems will be fixed in future firmware updates, as Sony have stated.
Backward compatibility I suppose has to exist, but personally I never played a PSX game on my PS2... The step up in graphics is so large that you spend your time drooling over the new stuff and just forgetting about the old ones.
At the price of the PS3, why would you buy it just to play PS2 games? PS2's can be had for cheap on ebay, so I don't see this as a problem either. I read that some of the problems were due to the fact that a number of games didn't stick to a set of technical standards set by Sony to ensure compatibility with future Playstations.
The main thing here is that Sony promised 100% compatibility and didn't deliver. The part about some games not following Sony's standards was supposed to be a non-issue since Sony put the Emotion chip into the PS3 to alleviate that problem. Not sure what's happening with Sony but I think they need to make a major shakeup in their decision makers.
Console launches are always rife with broken promises, and things like some older games not working, about 200 out of 8000 isn't too bad this early in the game. At least Sony is trying to work this out and make updates to get all games more or less functioning. Either way it's a better situation than with the Xbox 360 where they only make populare titles backwards compatable. It really shouldn't affect things too much, a lot of those 200 games are ones that most of us haven't even heard of or consist of dinky little glitches like in Devil May Cry 3:SE there's a little sound bug that occurs when a certain door opens.
The only thing with that though is MS never promised 100% compatibility, and actually at first said there would be no backwards compatibilty but when they found out the could emulate titles on the 360 threw it in as a bonus. Sony on the other hand has made huge promises and hasn't really delivered on anything. 100% compatibilty right out of the box - didn't happen. 400,000 units available for launch - didn't happen, analysts are estimating 150,000 to 250,000. They also promised being able to sign up for an online user id from a PC for those who were unable to get a launch unit but wanted to reserve they're username - until now still hasn't happened. I know all systems have their flaws but when Sony was promising things right up until release date knowing full well they couldn't deliver then they should be called out for it. After all how many people were upset becasue they pre-ordered their systems and Sony failed to deliver the amount of systems they said were coming to a store and that person was left without their unit.
Wow, I didn't realize there were this many issues. That is rough, I'm not sure exactly what I would have done in Sony's position but I'm sure they couldn't have handled it better than just leaving people hanging. Every console has it's faults after all, the Wii can't even play CDs/DVD's, the 360 had a bit of a bad rap for it's beefy external PSU's and early troubles with overheating/dying units, not to mention past consoles. I'm just pleased to hear the PS3 is a cool and quiet running machine with very little word of DOA units or crashes.
