[Harry]

I wish I had a bit more time to post, but I will put my thoughts in an editorial as soon as PsFantasy.com launches.

I will just say that, once again, the publishing branch of SCEE proved to be the worst subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment. But as we know, this is a problem with many European publishers.

The reduced backward compatibility isn't what is really unacceptable here; in fact, sooner or later, all PS3 models, including those sold in North America, will use software emulation for backward compatibility. Problems are much broader, and they start from the indecent and completely unjustified difference in prices between the European and the North American consoles AND games.

Originally Posted by Beretta55

This situation of "emulation" is just like the 360 emulation thing, since I own one I can tell you it's a bunch of crap. The first games that get emulated are the ones "easiest" to port over, not in terms of quality. That's why stuff like Barbies Horse Race Adventure and Drake and the 99 Dragons saw precedent over games like Ninja gaiden and Jade Empire etc.

That's a very good point you made here. While things should go a bit better with software emulation on PlayStation platforms than it went with the Xbox, since Microsoft had to deal with the additional issue of having to offer backward compatibility with a system that was made in good part with third party components and licenses, gamers buying a PlayStation 3 without the Emotion Engine could see problems with some of the best third party games for PlayStation 2. Companies like Konami, for example, often surpass the boundaries of the system by using its resources in very unorthodox (and unsupported) ways. Games like Metal Gear Solid 2 require much more resources and "tricks" to work and look as the developers want. And I just hope that first party and second party games for PlayStation 2 - like Shadow Of The Colossus or God Of War - were developed following more standard techniques.