We still don’t quite understand what Sony was thinking when they stopped manufacturing the 60GB PS3. Those blind to PS3 on-goings may have missed the fact that the 60GB PS3 was the flagship PS3 that included four USB ports, slots for a variety of memory card formats, and most importantly, complete backwards compatibility with the PS2. Later models of the PS3 dropped hardware PS2 compatibility by emulating the PS2 via software, and ultimately, dropping backwards compatibility entirely. Comments from various Sony fanboys we talked to responded to this move with quotes akin to, “That’s because Sony wants to emphasize their PS3 lineup, which has better games. Who wants to play old games anyway?”
Those kind of comments are interesting because it wasn’t long ago that Sony launched the PS2, touting, “Why would you buy an XBox when you can get a PS2 and have access to the whole Playstation library?” In other words, backwards compatibility was referred to as a “must-have” feature, and access to games from legacy systems is a trend today as well as yesterday, which is why one of the Wii’s key features is their Virtual Console, and why the 360 continues to support XBox games, despite the software emulation.
Sony’s sale of only one PS3 model these days is further interesting because they don’t advertise the lack of backwards compatibility, despite that their user-base is now accustomed to this kind of feature. When a PS2 owner now decides to buy a PS3, they’re being blind-sighted by the lack of backwards compatibility, since there’s no mention of this feature having been removed on the box of the 60GB model.
Then there’s the apparent lack of regard to users of other legacy hardware, as we recently realized when we convinced Bones WIley to pick up a copy of Rock Band last week. After unpacking the instruments and setting everything up, we quickly realized that there weren’t enough ports on the 60GB PS3 to plug everything in, since Sony decided to cut the number of available USB ports in half to two. This makes Rock Band on the “new” PS3 $25 more expensive for most gamers, since the Rock Band hub is required to plug everything in.
Off and running again, we had a blast playing Rock Band, and decided we’d pick up a second guitar, along with Guitar Hero III, so we could jam on the bass while Bones played lead. Then we found out that Rock Band guitars can’t be use in the Guitar Hero games, and vice versa, making this kind of purchase moot. Yet, Guitar Hero instruments on the 360 can be used with Rock Band without problem, making Rock Band yet again more expensive for PS3 owners assuming they already have Guitar Hero instruments.
It’s almost as if a PS3 purchase these days not only gets one a sub-par system with arguably the worst gaming library of the current-generation platforms, but the PS3 also rewards owners with a wallet-raping time and time again. We’re not sure how Sony managed to screw things up this badly, but even if we hadn’t been opposed to a future Sony console purchase before, now we’re definitely set to avoid Sony products like the plague.
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don’t know about the rock band issue, however the reason that backward compatibility is no longer included in the ps3 is because you can download it from the playstation store. They done this to save some space on the HD for people who will not be using it.
Backwards compatibility doesn’t use up valuable HD space: having to download games does. The move to drop the 60GB model from the PS3 lineup is a move based purely on Sony’s greed. The way it is now, Sony saves by reducing the hardware in the unit, and forces gamers to purchase older titles that they may already own if they want to play them on the PS3. Never mind that the gaming library of legacy titles to download is piss-poor.
The 60GB model used hardware extras to enable the PS3 to play old games, which means the software footprint, if any, was tiny. As for the models using software emulation, we can’t be talking a footprint over 10MB, considering that PS2 emulators on the PC are around that size.
I’m amazed that they took an already suspect system and made it even worse. I keep thinking about shelling out the money to buy one, because, frankly, I miss some of the Playstation-only titles like Ratchet and Clank. sigh The added attraction of being able to play HD movies on it also piqued my interest, but since I’m too cheap to replace my 500 lb. bulb TV for an HD TV (WHAT!?! It still works! How can I justify throwing it away? Do I really need to see the snot on a butterfly’s nose anyway?), I can’t really use that feature as an effective argument.
I agree with you that PS3 should remain backwards compatible. It’s expensive and annoying to have to replace all of your old games if you want to get rid of your PS2, it breaks, your roommate accidentally mistakes it for a waffle maker, or your ex runs off with it in some immature way to get back at you for a bad relationship. I’m unfamiliar with downloading games from the servers, because I haven’t had a desire to do so yet. Are you able to play games you downloaded on someone else’s system? (by logging in to your profile?) If not, this blows, because some of the fun is getting together with people and playing a multi-player game while eating wings and drinking more beer than you originally intended. I just always forget this requires having friends first.
PS3 now officially makes me angry, and I guess I’m going to continue to suffer without Ratchet and Clank until they make a system worth having once again.
The backward compatibility is available through the playstation store….. not just to download the older games that they have in the playstation store. If you download the pack that they have available for free, you are able to play any PS title that you have, not just games in the store. And the backward compatibility does take up HD space. The reason I say this is because in the download pack through the PS store takes up some HD space. Take a look inside the playstation store, i am thinking it is under game add-on’s but i might be wrong about where it is located. If you have any trouble finding this, let me know in the next post. I will get on and find it, then relay the info back to you. Btw Aelel, no you can not play games through your account. The games download directly to the HD of the playstation. You might be able to use a large flash drive and transfer the game files like that, but I have not tried that so don’t hold me to that.
We haven’t found any indication that a backwards compatibility “pack” is available via the Playstation store. It would be odd that such a pack would be available in the first place, since even software emulation on the 80GB model relied on a specific GPU for backwards compatibility. The “new” PS3 models do not include this GPU.
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