Three days earlier than planned. Since the new version supposedly will make its way to the NTSC market, too, sooner or later, I guess this also might be of interest to the non-Europeans here.
They have 3 levels of compatibility:
*** No known issues to date
** Should play on PLAYSTATION®3 with some minor issues
Should play on PLAYSTATION®3 with noticeable issues
Everything’s based on firmware v1.60, which will be released at launch. As expected, a large chunk of that list consists of EA Sports’ line-up. Shadow of the Colossus and God of War I&II should work without problems, FFXII got a ** rating, FFX is likely to have “noticable issues”.
Interestingly enough, MGS2 - one of the most important PS2 titles way back - isn’t listed at all. And GTA: San Andreas, unlike GTA3, only got a * rating.
Good lord, Sony’s “me-too” business plan has gone beyond motion-sensing controllers and downloadable games all the way to copying the 360’s half-assed backwards compatibility.
This just another classic example of Sony putting out a PR point that sounds good at the time but later turns out to be completely untrue or half true.
Hey, they have to reward the US early adopters with something, right? I’m glad I have my $600 PS3 that seems actually somewhat backwards compatible right now…
The raw number of supported titles is better than expected, but several games I own aren’t on the list, and a lot have ‘noticeable issues’- including some pretty high profile titles. Okami? San Andreas?
Oh well, there’ll be time for plenty more firmware revisions between now and whenever it becomes remotely worthwhile to pick up a PS3.
-DMC1/3 got ‘3 bars’, hilariously DMC2 is only ‘1 bar’. This could be spun as a positive for gamers round the world!
-Disgaea fans will find no issues with part 1, the sequel though…
-Zone of the Enders 2(Anubis II over there?) should work ok if it is indeed the correct game.
-Culdcept isn’t on the list. Never releasedin EUR territories?
-Maximo 1 ‘2 bars’. Maximo 2 isn’t listed.
-MGS3 has about 8 different SKU’s. Half of them are perfect, the other half suffer major issues. Subsistence owners seem to be in luck.
So… I remember reading an interview on 360’s BC efforts - you know back in the day when they would talk about such things - and one of the things they said that stuck with me is that they play these games from beginning to end.
They want to ensure that you don’t pop in a game that SEEMS to work only to find about half-way through that there’s a show-stopping bug…
In my country the translator fucked up and translated these two terms to have opposite meanings, so on the Danish version of the site *** is good, * is not so good and ** is worst (noticable).
Makes perfect sense.
With emulation solutions, the games least likely to work are those which were the most optimized, and written straight to the metal. Naughty Dog is well known for doing that, so it’s no surprise that a bunch of their games outright don’t work.
Yeah, it’s not like it’s unexpected that these games aren’t on the list or have problems, but these are also some of the best selling games on PS2. They really shouldn’t even advertise backwards compatibility at all if they can’t get the games the majority of people purchased to work on the new platform.
Anyone feel like putting together a quick percentage comparison between sony and MS for BC percentage?
Especially useful would be sony broken down by percentage of “no issue”, “minor issue”, “noticeable issue”. I’m guessing a “no issue” + “minor issue” would be the most accurate comparison to the 360.
I swear Sony’s just thinking up ways to keep me from ever buying a PS3. And I’ve been perfectly happy with my PS2 and PSP; you’d think I’d be a target audience!
Hmm, maybe MS changed to that policy after a time but I seem to remember many titles that were initially listed as BC only to find out they had game killing bugs a ways into the game.
Either way, they’re now both offering crappy support as far as I’m concerned. It’s been 3 months since Microsoft has issued a BC update. And in that time we’ve heard absolutely ZILCH.
Looking at my collection, 29 titles are missing from the list, 11 get a one-star rating, and 19 have two or three stars.
A bit more disappointing than I had expected after the “1000+ supported!” announcement, but for me personally it’s not as big a deal as it is for the 360. The 360’s BC lets me play things I otherwise couldn’t without buying new hardware, but the PS3’s BC merely affects the size of the rat’s nest of cables near the TV.
I’m sure there are people in the opposite situation, though.
Sony at least has a version out now that offers 99% Back Compat in the USA and Japan. That is a hell of a lot better than what Microsoft has done. The 360 has a 30% rate of back compat and little chance of that changing anytime soon.
