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EU PS3 Back Compatibility List Released
An anonymous reader writes "Via the semi-official ThreeSpeech blog, Sony has released the backwards compatibility list for EU's PS3's earlier than announced. The list itself offers a lot more games than Phil Harrisons previous statement of 1000 but noticeable problematic games include GTA:San Andreas, Gran Turismo 4 and the Final Fantasy Series."
In other words, half the games I own.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
...Lots of games run, but not an awful lot run without issue. There's a massive amount in that list rated as having problems.
I've said to myself in the past I'll buy a PS3 eventually when the price goes down primarily so I can see what the fuss about the Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry series is all about but with the official news of Devil May Cry 4 coming to the 360 at the same time as the PS3 and so forth my interest is dropping furthermore. That said Sony may well have managed to improve their backwards compatibility list by the time of a price drop at least! It's just a shame that in the meantime Sony's backwards compatibility list for the European release of the console appears on better than the 360's backwards compatibility list, the difference being MS never advertised full compatibility whereas Sony did so unless this list improves fast, full backwards compatibility as promised feels like a big fat lie from Sony - at least with the European console.
That Sony had these issues with the hardware BC engine in the initial SKUs as well - and they patched it. FFXII specifically was cited as one game that suffered from the issue and now it runs very well. I expect them to issue at least one patch for these issues. It's obviously something the customers want and Sony is getting a bit better about adressing them.
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Weird, the english version has a legend saying:
... with noticeable issues ... with intermittent problems
3 squares = No known issues to date
2 squares = Should play on PLAYSTATION®3 with some minor issues
1 square = Should play on PLAYSTATION®3 with noticeable issues
However, the Portuguese version says, roughly:
3 squares = same as above
2 squares =
1 squares =
The other languages I know enough about to check (French, Italian, Spanish and Danish) say about the same thing as the Portuguese version. What's happening here?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I'm surprised the software BC isnt' 100% considering Sony's got the full and completely documented specs on their prior systems in their information vault.
That said, it's entirely possible that the compatibility list is lacking due to the developers doing "optimizations" and using coding practices that were ill-advised by the original dev-docs.
More Twoson than Cupertino
i mean serioulsy who really plays Final Fantasy, GTA, Metal Gear or Devil may cry right? i mean there are other games on the ps3 right? what? no?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Final fantasy is the sole reason I own a PS2...
Ok my son (3) enjoys the gran tourismo 4 that came with it but i somehow doubt I'll be buying one of the software compatability jobs - I'll either get a us/jap import or if they do the same for that too I'll wait til some of the first million shipped turn up on ebay shipping to the uk at a decent price
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
Comes down to one thing, if you wanna play PS2 games you play them on a PS2.
Wow. The webpage they released the list on - wow. Just - wow. So bad.
Each of the letters executes a POST request, so you can't simply go Back after going Next, since it's a POST request. Next up, the "previous" and "next" links turn out to go to the current page, but read "?page=previous" and "?page=back". So they store the actual page in the session.
Ultimately: you can't use the back and forward button in your browser to go to the previous page.
But this has another side effect, which I can't help but expect that Sony intended: it's impossible to link to a given page or game. So while I can say that Final Fantasy X is marked as having "noticeable issues," I can't actually link to it. You'd have to navigate to it manually, through each page.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Wow, no Ratchet and Clank games listed. Only the Katamari Damacy sequel (We Love Katamari) works. It seems the US/Japan launch version will be the highly desired version on Ebay in a few years. At least for anyone wanting to have only one system hooked up to their TV...
Yay!.... Barbie Horse Adventures is listed as compatible. Maybe they were worried about the competition from the XBox 360?
The list seems pretty large, even ps one games. One wonders how bad the "some issues" one are and if they'll improve the virtual ps1 /2 emulation.
Great, they corrected it, as far as I can see. They're probably reading slashdot.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
The dupes removed there are about 771 3-star games.
I owned a Cube during the last generation. I never felt like I missed out on much by not owning a PS2, but there are a few games I would like to play, namely:
I'm sorry, but this is quite simply not good enough.
The currently available PS3 games are somewhat crappy (I'm not into FPS. I like offroad racers, but... I played Motorstorm two days ago. Feels like playing in slow motion after a few weeks of Excite Truck). I have a HD beamer, but as long as I can't copy Bluray disks, I'm not interested. I want to play PS2 games, but Sony screwed that up, too. I think instead of getting the PS3, I'll buy a PS2 as soon as I find one cheap.
There's simply no compelling reason to get a PS3, and all the non-compelling reasons don't (yet) add up to something compelling enough.
For a lot of these games, especially the newer ones, it would make sense to offer downloadable executable patches that run directly on the PS3 but get data from the PS2 disc. Shouldn't cost too much to get them to work on the PS3, and games are mostly data.
WTF is this shit? GTFO Sony and come up later with better list.
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
Looking through the list, the situation is nearly as bad as people had feared, but it doesn't seem to be a total disaster.
I count around 750 PS2 games (discounting duplicates) with no known issues, which is a reasonable first step.
However, there are a lot of notable omissions.
I've noticed:
The Final Fantasy series comes out really badly. FFX, FFX2 are only 1 dot, and the recent FFXII is only at 2. Most shockingly, the PS1 FFVII is missing completely, and this is a game people may well want to play.
Other games that people may want to play in bc include: Okami at only at 1 dot, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at one dot and Gran Turismo 4 which is missing completely.
On the plus side, God of War I, God of War II, Shadow of the Colossus and Ico all are listed as three dots.
Also surprisingly, some of the flagship PS2 games are missing: for instance, none of the Ratchet and Clank games are playable, only Jak 2 and 3 are playable, and then only at one dot.
I'm sure there are plenty of other big-name titles missing I've not noticed.
The problem I have with this list is that it's sufficiently bad at backwards compatibility that it means that if you have a Euro PS3, you can't just pick up a cheap PS2 game at a games store, as it is likely not to work properly. This was annoying with the Xbox 360 compatibility as well.
SCES-50928 SOCOM **
SCES-51618 SOCOM ***
With some games the "updated" releases may either improve the compatibility level (Like with SOCOM), or decrease it..
with the 1.6 firmware download, is the software emulation included in the US distribution as well?
personally, if they ever get to the point where they can upscale the ps2 games via software emulation, i would love the ability to toggle between hardware and software BC.
God of War 1 and 2, Shadow of the Colossus and Psychonauts are listed as playable without problems, but you have to click on the "Next >" button at the bottom of the window to display the rest of the games in a given letter.
I don't really understand why Sony decided to remove the Emotion Engine this early in the consoles life cycle when backward compatibility would seem the most crucial to the console's success. Also, the expected savings, as I understand, amount to no more than $20 per unit. I would also be very curious to know if the European variant of the PS3 will be making its way to North America and Japan.
FFT didn't even make the list, which I presume means it won't play on a PS3.
Tragic. It's the only PS1 game I've ever played on a PS2, because there is still no sequel to it anywhere but on a Gameboy.
While the Final Fantasy series is not as big in Europe (relatively speaking... it's still huge), Gran Tourismo and especially GTA are HUGE! Not to mention, most of the FIFA soccer games have major issues as well. This list is not good news, and is most definitely going to effect sales down the line when the complaints start mounting.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I guess you're looking at the 1.50 list not 1.60?
Final Fantasy Tactics!
And the PS1 version works great on the PSP Playstation Emulator right now.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
The largest complaints about the PS3 have been Cost, Lack of Compelling software and Availability. The first 2 solved the problem of the 3rd. Now there are PS3's available at retail wherever you go. Sony has still sold fewer than 2 million units world wide. MS sold over 10 million X-Box 360, and the Wii sold over 5 million. So either way you cut it, they have a lot of catching up to do.
2 things need to happen by the end of calander 2007 for them to be able to compete this generation. Compelling exclusive software needs to be made available, and they need to be able to drop the price. So by them removing the PS2 chips this early, they move towards a new sku that will be easier to drop the price on. If they really wanted to be competitive they should drop the premium pack at $600 (yes drop it) so they now have a $500 console at the highend, and offer the 'Emulation only' version as a $400 SKU. That would move units, and the consumer would be less angry about spotty BC since they could have bought up to the premium edition if it was that important to them.
where's Rez???
Thats the game i bought a PS2 to play!! I freaking love it - and so does my girlfriend, once we plug in the "trance vibrator" USB add-on.
dammit, why, WHY!
I don't know what you mean when you say worldwide, but I like to think of it as including more than North America and Japan. I also don't know where you get your sales figures from. vgcharts.org says they have sold 2.15 million, which isn't including some of the sales from this month. It would probably be more apt to compare worldwide sales after Sony launches worldwide.