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PS3 Delay May Hurt Current Gen Too

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the ea-executives-in-the-streets dept.

Next Generation reports that, in some analysts view, the real victim of the PS3 delay may actually be current gen console publishers and gamers. Houses like EA and Activision have a lot of money tied up in creating games for the next generation, and if the PS3 isn't launching here in the states until after summmer... They end up laying out four increasingly bad scenarios for the industry. From the article: "The third scenario theorizes on a 25 percent price cut on current generation software. We've already seen substantial price-cuts from EA, as the current-gen versions of The Godfather, Black and Fight Night Round 3 all debuted or will debut at $40, a 20 percent cut from the normal $50 price tag. The erosion of sales prices may be caused by publishers trying to unload inventory, or by publishers that target budget shoppers. This scenario could cause major publishers' earnings to drop between 35 and 49 percent."

2 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. PS3 may not be backwards compatible with PS2 by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting
    What makes anybody think that the PS3 will be backwards compatible with the PS2? The hardware is totally different. The PS2 is a MIPS machine with two streaming vector processors. The PS3 is a PowerPC machine with seven or eight "cell" processors and an NVidia GPU. Not even close.

    Sony has been backing away from claiming compatibility. "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."

    Sony will probably try software emulation, but there's no guarantee it will be fast enough to play all PS2 games. Tetris, no problem. Call of Duty, maybe not. "Compatible" might have to be an upgrade deal; turn in your PS2 game disk and get a discount on a PS3 version.

    1. Re:PS3 may not be backwards compatible with PS2 by Frenchy_2001 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Sony will probably try software emulation"

      Sony has one big advantage over MS on that side: they own the IPs to ALL the components in the PS2. They even own the designs. So, what they will do is refound the chips, grouping them all in a lower geometry as a single chip and incorporate the result in the PS3. This is how they did it on the PS2. This is also the reason they do a new lighter unit at the end of the console life: to prepare for that step (PSX -> PSOne, PS2 -> PSTwo).

      It is quite easy to fit a whole PS2, 6 years old tech, into a single chip in a modern 90nm tech. Quite cheap too, especially if it brings you more market chare...