My single biggest problem with the PS3? The loss of backwards compatibility. It’s a gaping hole in the system’s feature set. Then again, it may also be one that’s on the way back.
Some background: when the PS3 first launched, it was backwards-compatible, meaning you could play PlayStation 2 games on your new PlayStation 3. The 20GB and 60GB units released in North America and Japan featured hardware emulation (they literally had a PS2 chip inside), while those released in PAL territories featured software emulation (similar to how the 360 handles original Xbox games).
Later, though, this feature was removed. Anyone buying a 40GB, 80GB or 120GB PS3 couldn’t play a single PS2 game on them. It was a stupid, stupid move on the part of Sony.
A patent discovered by Siliconera, however, suggests that Sony might be re-thinking this stance. Filed in December 2008, it’s basically a patent for a method that would allow the PS3’s Cell chip to translate code from the PS2’s Emotion Engine. Not half-assed software emulation (which in previous PS3 models couldn’t run some games), full, total replication of the functionality of the Emotion Engine.
Which means, theoretically at least, you could play any PS2 game on any PS3, regardless of the model or year of release.
Whether this would allow you to play actual PS2 discs, or would just be the advance party for the sale of PS2 downloads on the PlayStation Store is unclear. We’d like the former, but with Sony being a business and all, would expect the latter.
Story from Kotaku Australia
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Sounds like Sony is finally taking the hint that there are PS2 games we still would like to play even after the PS2 has been phased out. But I don't understand why they would initially ahve the backwards compatibility installed only to remove it in later versions, especially since they still release games on the PS2 (although these are bound to be available on the PS3 as well). Here's hoping that they get this stupid mistake fixed up very quickly!
That's the problem with upgraded models. If only SOny followed the example of Nintendo and Microsoft...okay maybe just Nintendo...and stuck to the same base model which they released initially while simply swapping out the hard disks for bigger models as they released them. That way, there wouldn't be any issues with some versions being backwards compatible and others not being so.