James Delahunty
9 Mar 2007 10:22
According to a newspaper report by Nikkei, and Reuters, while Europe is the first territory to get PlayStation 3 (PS3) units with less support for backwards compatibility with PS2 games, Sony will begin shipping the version of the machine without the PS2 hardware to Japan and North America later on this year. The move to switch to a software emulation solution, like that seen on an Xbox 360, is to cut production costs.
The PS2 emotion engine provided the PlayStation 3 with graphics and data processing functions for old PlayStation 2 games. Removing the hardware and instead using a solution to emulate it, means that more support for specific titles will added gradually. At least 1,000 games will be working on the console by the European launch date, according to Sony.
Sony loses money for every single PlayStation 3 unit that is sold, due to its inclusion of expensive hardware such as the Cell processor, referred to as a supercomputer on a chip, and the included Blu-ray Disc drive. This business year, Sony estimates its game unit will have lost over 200 billion yen but aims to break even on games for the year starting April 1st.
Sources:
Reg Hardware
Reuters