Upon last weekend,s launch in Japan of the PS3, gamers found out that the machine was not able to play various PS1 and PS2 games. Full backwards compatibility was touted as one of the main features for the PS3 by Sony. Today, Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, addressed this issue and said that the problem would be fixed.
Hirai said that Sony would be issuing firmware upgrades so that “all the games on the PlayStation 2 games will be playable on your PS3,” according to Reuters. He continued, “Our goal is to make sure that we have 100% compatibility," according to Reuters.
In the meanwhile, Hirai said that the majority of the 8000 games available for the PS2 are “playable right out of the box” on the PS3. No listing has been made as to which present and past gen PlayStation games are not playable on the PS3. The time for the firmware update referred to by Hirai has not yet been announced by Sony.
Microsoft had similar problems when it first released the Xbox 360 and later decided to shelve the idea of making the 360 100% backwards compatible with original Xbox games due to the lengthy process and costs involved. Sony’s promise to make the PS3 100% backwards compatible may be a noble goal, but if the cost expenditures outweigh the benefits of total compatibility, the promise of 100% compatible titles may be one that will be hard to keep.
