Sony removes hardware backwards compatibility for PAL PS3

[randay]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
I don't mean to Sony bash, but seriously, they've already completely pissed off the Europeans, Brits, and Aussies with the pricing schemes...how much more is this going to piss them off if more than a few major games aren't playable.

I don't get the decision myself. Sure it will save them ~$27 per console by taking the PS2 chip out but you're splintering the userbase and telling your PAL customers that they are getting less functionality for the same price (or more) than the PS3 customers in Japan and North America got.

Would have made more sense to get the software emulation working to close to the existing design as possible first and the release PS3s without the PS2 chip.

what i don't get is apparently even with the chip the games look like garbage apparently.

link has video
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/13/ps2-graphics-on-ps3-look-like-crap/
"
When played on a PS3, PS1 and PS2 games look dramatically worse as the above video indicates. The big black box resizes the graphic output of 480i PS1/PS2 games at a lower resolution sans filtering causing screen artifacts and jagged edges. Like, jagged edges that somebody took a knife to. It appears the issue has nothing to do with the TV, cables, or your PS3 resolution setting, something only a firmware upgrade can fix."


see the horror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

Actually, they fixed all that with a recent update.

well at least porn is going to only be on HDDVD, death to Blu-ray!!

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: uli2000

Originally posted by: funboy42
Slaps sony across the face and tells them to fvcking make a striped down versions that doesnt have blue ray, a regular old dvd player in it, no frills units, that costs around the $250-$300 range and make sure it plays all ps2 games, and a lot of people will flock to go buy it.

Sony can't do that. They are forcing all software to be on blu-ray only, whether it needs the space or not. BTW, has there been a console game bigger size wise than a dual layer dvd yet?

Yes but only because of padding (FMV for example) and duplication of data on the disc to improve read times.

 

[DivideBYZero]

....and the last of the people queuing up for a PS3 in Europe go home.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
They are cutting costs, no big surprise, down the road it could lead to price cuts, software emulation will probably still work with many of the popular titles.

If they were going to do this, they should have done it from the get-go instead of alienating their European (former) customers. And in the process, they made all their fanboys look stupid for bashing the Xbox 360's backward compatibility. At least Microsoft had a better reason for doing it the way they did it.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
I don't mean to Sony bash, but seriously, they've already completely pissed off the Europeans, Brits, and Aussies with the pricing schemes...how much more is this going to piss them off if more than a few major games aren't playable.

I don't get the decision myself. Sure it will save them ~$27 per console by taking the PS2 chip out but you're splintering the userbase and telling your PAL customers that they are getting less functionality for the same price (or more) than the PS3 customers in Japan and North America got.

Would have made more sense to get the software emulation working to close to the existing design as possible first and the release PS3s without the PS2 chip.

what i don't get is apparently even with the chip the games look like garbage apparently.

link has video
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/13/ps2-graphics-on-ps3-look-like-crap/
"
When played on a PS3, PS1 and PS2 games look dramatically worse as the above video indicates. The big black box resizes the graphic output of 480i PS1/PS2 games at a lower resolution sans filtering causing screen artifacts and jagged edges. Like, jagged edges that somebody took a knife to. It appears the issue has nothing to do with the TV, cables, or your PS3 resolution setting, something only a firmware upgrade can fix."


see the horror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

Actually, they fixed all that with a recent update.

ah oops, still pretty sad to have such issues when you've had an extra year of dev time compared to your competitor. still no upscaling either

 

[Queasy]

My question is when are they going to start sending these revisions to US and Japanese customers and how are they going to let consumers know which version they are getting.

 

[randay]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
I don't mean to Sony bash, but seriously, they've already completely pissed off the Europeans, Brits, and Aussies with the pricing schemes...how much more is this going to piss them off if more than a few major games aren't playable.

I don't get the decision myself. Sure it will save them ~$27 per console by taking the PS2 chip out but you're splintering the userbase and telling your PAL customers that they are getting less functionality for the same price (or more) than the PS3 customers in Japan and North America got.

Would have made more sense to get the software emulation working to close to the existing design as possible first and the release PS3s without the PS2 chip.

what i don't get is apparently even with the chip the games look like garbage apparently.

link has video
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/13/ps2-graphics-on-ps3-look-like-crap/
"
When played on a PS3, PS1 and PS2 games look dramatically worse as the above video indicates. The big black box resizes the graphic output of 480i PS1/PS2 games at a lower resolution sans filtering causing screen artifacts and jagged edges. Like, jagged edges that somebody took a knife to. It appears the issue has nothing to do with the TV, cables, or your PS3 resolution setting, something only a firmware upgrade can fix."


see the horror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

Actually, they fixed all that with a recent update.

ah oops, still pretty sad to have such issues when you've had an extra year of dev time compared to your competitor. still no upscaling either

please stop talking.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: randay

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
I don't mean to Sony bash, but seriously, they've already completely pissed off the Europeans, Brits, and Aussies with the pricing schemes...how much more is this going to piss them off if more than a few major games aren't playable.

I don't get the decision myself. Sure it will save them ~$27 per console by taking the PS2 chip out but you're splintering the userbase and telling your PAL customers that they are getting less functionality for the same price (or more) than the PS3 customers in Japan and North America got.

Would have made more sense to get the software emulation working to close to the existing design as possible first and the release PS3s without the PS2 chip.

what i don't get is apparently even with the chip the games look like garbage apparently.

link has video
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/13/ps2-graphics-on-ps3-look-like-crap/
"
When played on a PS3, PS1 and PS2 games look dramatically worse as the above video indicates. The big black box resizes the graphic output of 480i PS1/PS2 games at a lower resolution sans filtering causing screen artifacts and jagged edges. Like, jagged edges that somebody took a knife to. It appears the issue has nothing to do with the TV, cables, or your PS3 resolution setting, something only a firmware upgrade can fix."


see the horror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

Actually, they fixed all that with a recent update.

ah oops, still pretty sad to have such issues when you've had an extra year of dev time compared to your competitor. still no upscaling either

please stop talking.

hurts does it? oh well, too bad.

 

[Dacalo]

My post from Software:

This is old news, it was mentioned back in October 2006 by Sony that they will be removing EE+GS chip in future units.

EDIT: Future units in the U.S. and Japan will be without EE+GS chip as well and all BC will be handled via software. This will make it easier to upscale games and make them look better and play better. It's no different than what Xbox 360 is doing now. 80% of games initially and 90% expected later.

Originally posted by: mugs

If they were going to do this, they should have done it from the get-go instead of alienating their European (former) customers. And in the process, they made all their fanboys look stupid for bashing the Xbox 360's backward compatibility. At least Microsoft had a better reason for doing it the way they did it.

I agree with you, but Sony was too lazy to program a good PS2 emulation, so they just slapped on partial PS2 hardware. Sony's excuse is that they didn't have the time.

 

[randay]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: randay

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
I don't mean to Sony bash, but seriously, they've already completely pissed off the Europeans, Brits, and Aussies with the pricing schemes...how much more is this going to piss them off if more than a few major games aren't playable.

I don't get the decision myself. Sure it will save them ~$27 per console by taking the PS2 chip out but you're splintering the userbase and telling your PAL customers that they are getting less functionality for the same price (or more) than the PS3 customers in Japan and North America got.

Would have made more sense to get the software emulation working to close to the existing design as possible first and the release PS3s without the PS2 chip.

what i don't get is apparently even with the chip the games look like garbage apparently.

link has video
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/13/ps2-graphics-on-ps3-look-like-crap/
"
When played on a PS3, PS1 and PS2 games look dramatically worse as the above video indicates. The big black box resizes the graphic output of 480i PS1/PS2 games at a lower resolution sans filtering causing screen artifacts and jagged edges. Like, jagged edges that somebody took a knife to. It appears the issue has nothing to do with the TV, cables, or your PS3 resolution setting, something only a firmware upgrade can fix."


see the horror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

Actually, they fixed all that with a recent update.

ah oops, still pretty sad to have such issues when you've had an extra year of dev time compared to your competitor. still no upscaling either

please stop talking.

hurts does it? oh well, too bad.

yes, it does hurt my head when i try and read your drivel. you should be more considerate, but i guess that wont happen.

 

[Dacalo]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
what i don't get is apparently even with the chip the games look like garbage apparently.

link has video
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/13/ps2-graphics-on-ps3-look-like-crap/
"
When played on a PS3, PS1 and PS2 games look dramatically worse as the above video indicates. The big black box resizes the graphic output of 480i PS1/PS2 games at a lower resolution sans filtering causing screen artifacts and jagged edges. Like, jagged edges that somebody took a knife to. It appears the issue has nothing to do with the TV, cables, or your PS3 resolution setting, something only a firmware upgrade can fix."


see the horror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

Dude, that was fixed a month ago. :laugh:

 

[longhornlump]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: uli2000

Originally posted by: funboy42
Slaps sony across the face and tells them to fvcking make a striped down versions that doesnt have blue ray, a regular old dvd player in it, no frills units, that costs around the $250-$300 range and make sure it plays all ps2 games, and a lot of people will flock to go buy it.

Sony can't do that. They are forcing all software to be on blu-ray only, whether it needs the space or not. BTW, has there been a console game bigger size wise than a dual layer dvd yet?

Yes but only because of padding (FMV for example) and duplication of data on the disc to improve read times.

RFOM is ~16GB with approx. ~480mb of padding. I couldn't find anything that found how much was duplicate data on the disc though. They probably could have compressed the game to fit on dual layer DVD but didn't since they had the space available to them.

http://blogs.ign.com/Ted-Insomniac/2006/10/19/34235/
http://ps3.qj.net/Resistance-Fall-of-Ma...GB-of-garbage-UPDATED-/pg/49/aid/74232

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: randay

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: randay

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
I don't mean to Sony bash, but seriously, they've already completely pissed off the Europeans, Brits, and Aussies with the pricing schemes...how much more is this going to piss them off if more than a few major games aren't playable.

I don't get the decision myself. Sure it will save them ~$27 per console by taking the PS2 chip out but you're splintering the userbase and telling your PAL customers that they are getting less functionality for the same price (or more) than the PS3 customers in Japan and North America got.

Would have made more sense to get the software emulation working to close to the existing design as possible first and the release PS3s without the PS2 chip.

what i don't get is apparently even with the chip the games look like garbage apparently.

link has video
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/13/ps2-graphics-on-ps3-look-like-crap/
"
When played on a PS3, PS1 and PS2 games look dramatically worse as the above video indicates. The big black box resizes the graphic output of 480i PS1/PS2 games at a lower resolution sans filtering causing screen artifacts and jagged edges. Like, jagged edges that somebody took a knife to. It appears the issue has nothing to do with the TV, cables, or your PS3 resolution setting, something only a firmware upgrade can fix."


see the horror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

Actually, they fixed all that with a recent update.

ah oops, still pretty sad to have such issues when you've had an extra year of dev time compared to your competitor. still no upscaling either

please stop talking.

hurts does it? oh well, too bad.

yes, it does hurt my head when i try and read your drivel. you should be more considerate, but i guess that wont happen.

what hurts is seeing a company screw over its consumers over and over. the fact is they are stripping away value from the european version of the ps3 and breaking one of their original promises of 100% backwards compatibility. as for drivel, eat me.

 

[DivideBYZero]

HAR HAR HARRRRRRR!!! The PS3 is a WEAK SACK!!


/forum grenade

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: longhornlump

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: uli2000

Originally posted by: funboy42
Slaps sony across the face and tells them to fvcking make a striped down versions that doesnt have blue ray, a regular old dvd player in it, no frills units, that costs around the $250-$300 range and make sure it plays all ps2 games, and a lot of people will flock to go buy it.

Sony can't do that. They are forcing all software to be on blu-ray only, whether it needs the space or not. BTW, has there been a console game bigger size wise than a dual layer dvd yet?

Yes but only because of padding (FMV for example) and duplication of data on the disc to improve read times.

RFOM is ~16GB with approx. ~480mb of padding. I couldn't find anything that found how much was duplicate data on the disc though. They probably could have compressed the game to fit on dual layer DVD but didn't since they had the space available to them.

http://blogs.ign.com/Ted-Insomniac/2006/10/19/34235/
http://ps3.qj.net/Resistance-Fall-of-Ma...GB-of-garbage-UPDATED-/pg/49/aid/74232

The FMV (full motion video) that RFOM uses is what pushes it over the DVD-9 size. From what I understand, it isn't really anything special either.

Knowing Square Enix though, I'm sure they'll fill up two Blu-Ray discs with FMV sequences.

The Oblivion devs have already mentioned that they had to duplicate data on the Blu-Ray disc quite a bit to improve read times. If they had to do it, I'm pretty sure other PS3 games had to as well.

 

[mlm]

In the short-term I can see how this is a problem, but in the long-term this can only be a good thing. The reason the PS1 compatibility is already there is because they've already made the emulator (PS1->PSP downloads). I would expect the same feature for PS2 games. Though I would give them a year to get out all the good PS1 ports first.

They said BC isn't their top priority, but I think that's a good decision. I would much rather see a focus on creating new software and features rather than ensuring that PS2 games will work. Most early adopters are PS2 owners anyway (especially in Europe from what I've heard).

Edit:

The FMV (full motion video) that RFOM uses is what pushes it over the DVD-9 size. From what I understand, it isn't really anything special either.

From Beyond3D:

Padding file size = 32MB.
Total padding = 1.9GB.
Total FMV = 7GB.
Audio = 2.24GB. (605MB for music and English language only)
Game Assets = 6.12GB.

What I've heard for 360 games, there's a limit at 7 GB (no idea if the limit exists for PS2). That would mean the game would just barely fit, probably with no padding (if that's even possible, the load times would be horrible).

I know I'm in the minority, but the multi-language features are a great asset to me. There was a recent article where a developer essentially said as much.

 

[Bitek]

Sony risks falling out of console battle

Part II of II, The console death spiral

Excellent articles from a business perspective on the PS3s troubles. Gives good insight into console economics, and outlines how the PS3 is currently in a world of hurt, and if Sony can't get units moving soon, they risk falling out of the next-gen wars almost entirely.

PS3s problems are compounded by the huge success of the Wii, and Sony is losing alot of devs to Nintendo. Compounded with the enormous cost to dev the games, w/o a sizable # of units in the field, the PS3 is risking having much of its software simply become X360 ports. W/o optimization, the hardware, which is the big selling point of the PS3, will never be realized, rendering the PS3 and expensive and underperforming catastrophe. This news forthe Euro market is about the last thing Sony needed at this moment (the bigger news being the cost is over $800 for Uk, Aust and others IMO.)

The Wii and X360 will be able to move their pricepoint, command exclusive killer apps, and could push the black hulk right out of he market. The Japanese market is Sony's ace in the hole, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out. If MS had blundered so w/ the X360, they surely would have been out of the console business.

 

[preslove]

Originally posted by: Hafen
Sony risks falling out of console battle

Part II of II, The console death spiral

Excellent articles from a business perspective on the PS3s troubles. Gives good insight into console economics, and outlines how the PS3 is currently in a world of hurt, and if Sony can't get units moving soon, they risk falling out of the next-gen wars almost entirely.

PS3s problems are compounded by the huge success of the Wii, and Sony is losing alot of devs to Nintendo. Compounded with the enormous cost to dev the games, w/o a sizable # of units in the field, the PS3 is risking having much of its software simply become X360 ports. W/o optimization, the hardware, which is the big selling point of the PS3, will never be realized, rendering the PS3 and expensive and underperforming catastrophe. This news forthe Euro market is about the last thing Sony needed at this moment (the bigger news being the cost is over $800 for Uk, Aust and others IMO.)

The Wii and X360 will be able to move their pricepoint, command exclusive killer apps, and could push the black hulk right out of he market. The Japanese market is Sony's ace in the hole, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out. If MS had blundered so w/ the X360, they surely would have been out of the console business.

This did not escape the notice of the software makers either. They are faced with optimistically twice the cost to write a game for the PS3 as the 360 and only a fifth the market to sell it in to. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the second generation of PS3 games will have a lot more ROI calculations done on them before they get a green light. Many won't get that green light.

This is far more than a theoretical problem though, in talking to several game developers, the death spiral for Sony has already begun. Many are telling me they are not writing Cell code any more, just farming it out, the 360 is the development target now.

The problem there is that the 360 will be utilized fully and optimized for. If there are special features of the 360, they will get used, and every tweak and hack explored as well. This will then be shoveled off to some poor third party who has to make it work on the PS3, a very different architecture with a very different set of strengths and weaknesses.

I've been saying this for a while. The PS3 is very likely doomed. As Balmer once said "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS"

Software costs lots of $ to produce & if you can't convince developers to write it for your platform, no matter what platform that is, you will fail. The lower costs of development on the 360 make it the obvious target for high end console game developers.

 

[Linux23]

Sony should just fall on their sword already.

:roll:

 

[Bitek]

Originally posted by: Linux23
Sony should just fall on their sword already.

:roll:

OHHH, I have dis-graced my famer-ry. UGHH...Oh, I see a good place to die....

 

[regnez]

Tomorrow's big story:
"SONY REMOVES BLU-RAY DRIVE FROM EURO PS3... REPLACES WITH FDD"

Kutaragi says "Significantly fewer" PS3 games are going to work on the Euro PS3.

:thumbsdown: