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PS3 and PS2 Backwards Compatibility

Posted by LadyPSerenity in News Articles July 01, 2009 at 11:27:47 AM

Sony has quietly filed a patent that appears to reveal that they are planning or at the very least considering the possibility of reintroducing full PS2 emulation to the PS3. The PS3 initially shipped with a special chip for this purpose but was later removed in an attempt but Sony in order to cut costs.

The 'plan' is suggested by Sony's American operation recently filing a patent which describes a method by which the PS3s "Cell" processor could emulate the PS2's "Emotion Engine", without the need for special hardware.

Initially the PS3 actually shipped with this functionality provided in the hardware and this was a key selling point (After all backwards compatibility is very key for gamers), but with later revisions of the console the chip was dropped and with it the backwards compatibility of the PS2.

Whether dropping the chip was a wise move is possibly debatable considering how the PS2 is apparently still resisting being phased out as other consoles do when the next best thing comes along. Yet it seems the whole problem may be avoided if a firmware update could simply add the required features in software and allow the PS3 to play PS2 games once more.

Then again, working in a patent office myself, I'm a little skeptical that we may see this any time soon. Large technology companies will often file the patents before they have any intention of actually using it and generally the technology is still in it's development stage. Many patents go abandoned when the technology either fails to work, produce or something far better comes along.
Only time will tell if this will be something we as consumers and gamers will see in use.

Of course, there is also the possibility that the patent is but one of the many thousands filed all the time by a large technology company speculatively with no immediate hopes of release.

Source: Sankaku Complex

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