European PS3 to have revised hardware

23rd February 2007
Source: mcvuk.com

Sony have unveiled the final spec for the PAL PlayStation 3 and there's a nasty surprise.

A spokesmen from Sony said:

''The backwards compatibility is not going to be as good as the U.S. and Japan models.''

Is this because we're bad people? Apparently not. The PlayStation 3 was first launched in Japan and North America in November 2006 and the model that will be introduced in Europe will be designed differently.

SCEE has released a statement this morning outlining the final retail package, with 'a broad range' of PSOne titles and a 'limited' selection of PS2 titles backwards compatible out of the box. Ouch.

Software will take over some of the functionality that was originally taken care of by dedicated chips, which means far fewer PlayStation 2 (PS2) games can be played on a European PS3 compared with the Japanese and American PS3 models which play 98 percent of old games.

David Reeves, president of SCEE said the following on the news:

''PS3 is first and foremost a system that excels in playing games specifically designed to exploit the power and potential of the PS3 system. Games designed for PS3 offer incredible graphics quality, stunning gameplay and massively improved audio and video fidelity that is simply not achievable with PS1 and PS2 games.''

''Rather than concentrate on PS2 backwards compatibility, in the future, company resources will be increasingly focused on developing new games and entertainment features exclusively for PS3, truly taking advantage of this exciting technology.''

This news is going to come as somewhat of a shock to a large number of prospective PS3 buyers. Will you choose to import after hearing this news or does it not matter to you? Discuss this story further on our forums

Matt Dillon