Sony Quietly Adds PS2 Emulation To the PS4 (eurogamer.net)

An anonymous reader writes: The Digital Foundry blog reports that Sony has added functionality to the PlayStation 4 that allows it to act as an emulator for some PlayStation 2 games. Surprisingly, the company did not mention that this functionality is live; a new Star Wars game bundle just happened to include three titles that were released on the PS2. From the article: "How can we tell? First of all, a system prompt appears telling you that select and start buttons are mapped to the left and right sides of the Dual Shock 4's trackpad. Third party game developers cannot access the system OS in this manner. Secondly, just like the PS2 emulator on PlayStation 3, there's an emulation system in place for handling PS2 memory cards. Thirdly, the classic PlayStation 2 logo appears in all of its poorly upscaled glory when you boot each title." Sony has confirmed the games are being emulated, but declined to provide any further details.

Comments

Wouldn't a PS3 emulator make more sense?

[Viol8]

I'm sure a PS2 emulator has novelty value but I'm not sure many people will really be that interested. Wouldn't a PS3 emulator make more sense given a lot of PS4 owners may still have a PS3 to play PS3 games and might prefer one console to do both? Or is the PS4 simply not powerful enough to do it?

Re:Wouldn't a PS3 emulator make more sense?

[tepples]

I can't remember if it was PS->PS2, or PS2->PS3 ... but essentially they achieved backwards compatibility by making the CPU for the previous generation the front-end processor for the new generation.

There have been several consoles like that. Sega Genesis included the Sega Master System CPU as a coprocessor mostly used for audio and a VDP that can fall back to Master System video modes. PlayStation 2 included the original PlayStation's CPU as the I/O coprocessor. Nintendo DS included the GBA's ARM7 as the I/O coprocessor.

There are a few other approaches to backward compatibility. One is to overclock the same CPU (Game Boy Color, Wii), possibly with more identical cores (Wii U). Another is to disable the previous CPU entirely when running new games (Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 3 with SACD logo).

Short version

[Rik Sweeney]

Sony: We're not going to add emulation to the PS4, there's just no interest in it.
Microsoft: We've added emulation to the XBoxOne!
Sony: Shit. Guys, get coding...

Competition = good.

Re:Because of the endless whiners

[KatchooNJ]

What I want to know is when are they adding "Other OS" back?

Just so people don't get confused and think that "Other OS" was something that the PS4 previously had, it was a feature removed from the PS3.

Re:Because of the endless whiners

[DrXym]

What I want to know is when are they adding "Other OS" back?

What I want to know is how many people whining about Other OS being removed ever used it or realized the limitations to it in the first place. Or understood the implications for their console (saturation levels of piracy and a death spiral into shovelware) if it had allowed to remain in place.

Re:Because of the endless whiners

[Wootery]

the USERS removed it when they upgraded the firmware

And I fixed a bunch of security issues when I ran Windows Update this morning. Except that no, it's not really me that did that.

You're also conveniently failing to mention that firmware updates aren't exactly optional. Some PS3 software (games or apps) require the most recent firmware, giving you the choice between keeping OtherOS, or keeping your PS3 usable for other tasks.

US army

A minor point, but it was the USAF that built a PS3 cluster.

many butthurt morons were butthurt because they thought, incorrectly, that this "other os" feature allowed for piracy

Not that I've ever seen, no. It was about running Linux. It was tinkerers that used OtherOS, not pirates. Sony used the hypervisor to deliberately break GPU access, iirc, presumably to prevent gaming on OtherOS.