PS3 Price, Compatibility In Question

Lots of rumours out there right now about the next-gen consoles. It's in question, right now, exactly how backwards compatible the PS3 will be. Gamespot reports: "When responding to questions about whether or not the SCPH-75000's backwards-compatibility issues heralded similar problems with Sony's next-gen console, she demurred. 'It's hard to say the PlayStation 3 will be 100 percent backwards compatible but as we said earlier this year we aim to make it so as much as possible,' Sakamoto said," Meanwhile, 1up.com wonders exactly how pricey the console will be. From that article: "In the past months, the Japanese blog CoolGamer has been a dependable source of early information regarding the Japanese game market. Not once has their news turned out to be a false lead, so that's why it was pretty important today when the site updated with a small notice saying 'PS3 price set below 40000 Yen,' which is about $400 at current exchange rates."

Comments

doesn't need to be 100%

[FadedTimes]

Even the PS2 wasn't 100% backwards compatible with all the PS1 games. If the PS3 plays 75%+ of PS2 games and 50%+ of PS1 games, in my opinion that would be 'ok' with me. Even if Sony only hit those %'s it will already be much better than xbox360 compatibility with xbox games. I'm holding out on my opinion of Nintendo comparisons because they've only said it will play gamecube games, and haven't had any words on price for playing other past generation games (hopefully it will be free).

As far as the price I think PS3 will come out high, but by the holidays it should come down, as long as it comes out 6months before the holidays.

All this is just opinion with no real basis rather than what I preceive as reality.

Re:Masters of the obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't speculating that the PS3 is going to be the same price as the Xbox360. The PS2 launched in Japan for something around 39,000Y, which is close to $400US. Exactly the same as the PS1 launched for in Japan, and what the PS3 is rumored to be aiming for in its price point. Here's the thing: Sony also launched those two consoles in the US for $299. If this trend was followed, it would make a fully capable PS3 cost less than a fully capable Xbox360 (and don't nod to the crippled $299 version, since that won't even be able to play all next generation games).

How was this modded as insightful?

Who needs backwards compatibility?

[Andy_R]

If you have a library of PS2 games, then surely you also have a PS2 to play them on, and don;t really NEED backwards compatibility?

I'll admit the backwards compatibility was a big influence on my decision to buy a PS2, but in reality I only used it 2 or 3 times to play old games, so this time round I'm not bothered at all.

I was actually far more impressed with (and spent more money on) the improved re-makes of N64 Zelda games for the non-backwards-compatible Game Cube.