Quote:
Originally Posted by Solitaire1
Why didn't Sony just make the PS3 backwards compatible with PS2 games? One of the reasons the PS2 was such a success is that it was fully backwards compatible with PS1 games. This gave the PS2 a massive library of available games even before the first PS2 game was released. I know money might be a possible reason, yet they did make the PS2 backwards compatible with the PS1.
|
Money.
Early block PS3 models have a full PS2 inside, just as PS2 has a full PSX inside. This cost money to manufacture so the executives at Sony told the engineers and programmers to move it to software emulation and eventually to kill it off entirely because...
... PS2 was still a strong seller through PS3's early to mid life. Many studios were releasing their games with parallel PS2 and PS3 editions. And since PS2 games were typically $10 less than their PS3 counterparts with a commensurately smaller royalty for Sony? Follow the money.
As a note, Sony's PS2 software emulation was and remains rubbish. That's not a knock on the programmers. PS2 itself is tricky to emulate, compounded by the anti-cheat device hacks that some studios used in their games which render them unplayable even on PCSX2 today.