PS3 and BC: Do you think removing PS2 BC was worth it?

[jukeboxhero2396]

As someone who had a launch 20gb PS3, I was shocked when I found out that later PS3s did not support BC. I understand it was done to cut down on costs, but I always thought the hardware BC was absolutely incredible. Now it kinda sucks because it only plays the native PS2 resolution, but for the time being able to easily play multiple consoles at once was so damn awesome. The fact the PS4 has no BC was definitely one of the most disappointing aspects of this generation. Especially for HD ports, some HD ports are still on PS3 when they should be able to run on PS4.

I know the PS3 was incredibly expensive for its time, and it still is today, but when I think about being able to have 3 systems on 1 console, that just blows my mind. I always thought it was such a weird decision, and despite PS2 classics or HD ports being available, I do know that most games ran flawlessly on the hardware models. I remember even using wireless controllers was so awesome at the time, and to never have to worry about using my PS2 anymore. This generation, I actually sold my PS3 because most of the games I played luckily did get ported, but some games I really wish did have BC. The older god of war games for example, stuck on a 10+ year old port on the PS3.

 

[Springy]

I'm more confused they didn't continue with software BC (European launch PS3s didn't have hardware BC, just software). Was there a technical reason that was dropped?

 

[defaltoption]

Worth it for Sony, of course, the price dropping is what saved that gen for them.

Worth it for me, no I hate when backwards compatibility is not a focus for a console manufacturer, they're saying hey remember all that support you guys gave us fuck it do it again. Its why Im so glad Microsoft has been pushing it because now it forces Sony to do it and hopefully it forces Nintendo to do it.

How many excellent experiences will die stuck on the DS family or the PS3.

 

[Firima]

According to The Wall Street Journal:

There's a catch to the lower price: The new $399 PlayStation model will not play games designed for the PlayStation 2, Sony's popular older game console. Mr. Tretton conceded that removing that capability, along with a few other features, isn't dramatically reducing Sony's cost of manufacturing the console but will instead encourage buyers of the entry-level PlayStation 3 to purchase more games designed specifically for the new system.

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So to answer your question, OP:

Fuck no.

 

[Eoin]

I'm more confused they didn't continue with software BC (European launch PS3s didn't have hardware BC, just software). Was there a technical reason that was dropped?

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No model had full software BC. The original NA/JP models had the PS2 CPU and GPU included. The PAL launch models (and some later NA/JP models) removed the CPU but kept the GPU. The models that dropped backwards compatibility removed the GPU as well.

 

[eraFROMAN]

It sucks not having it, but PS2 and PS3 architecture is such a mess that PlayStation itself is better off letting those go for something more standard.

I personally love full, real BC. I only want to have one or 2 machines out and connected at a time. GBA SP was perfect about this, XB1 is almost there, and Wii U could have officially supported all Nintendo disk based consoles, but Homebrew covers that.

 

[Corleth the Fey]

My very not hardware BC PS3 Slim is doing a fine job of playing a good amount of my ripped PS2 discs with its fancy custom firmware. When Sony taketh away, others fill the void.

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

I remember back in the day I tried playing GTA vice city and gran turismo 4 and they looked absolutely terrible on my 1080p TV.

 

[Springy]

No model had full software BC. The original NA/JP models had the PS2 CPU and GPU included. The PAL launch models (and some later NA/JP models) removed the CPU but kept the GPU. The models that dropped backwards compatibility removed the GPU as well.

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So assuming the quote above you is accurate and there was a negligible cost saving with their removal, why the half-step of taking out the CPU on its own first? Why not keep it as-is until the policy shifted?

 

[Jon God]

Er. Worth it? Hmm that's sort of a weird thing to answer:

hat PS3s all seem to die to YLOD.
Thin PS3s have no BC

both have their issues.

 

[TaySan]

For Sony? Yes it was they needed to do whatever they could to keep the price down.

For me as a consumer? No.

 

[krae_man]

So assuming the quote above you is accurate and there was a negligible cost saving with their removal, why the half-step of taking out the CPU on its own first? Why not keep it as-is until the policy shifted?

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The 60gb PS3 cost $840 to manufacture at launch. They were bleeding an unsustainable amount of money. They needed to cut every dollar could. That's why the USB ports got reduced, the memory card reader went away, the BC went, the hard drive got smaller etc. If anything, they probably should have completely removed BC sooner.

 

[Rygar 8Bit]

For me no. Taking away any functionality is a negative. Hope to get it back with the PS5.

 

[Nolbertos]

if it weren't for removing PS2 BC and the EE chip from the PS3, don't think the PS3 would've sold as decently to make up ground to the Xbox360. On the other hand, removing BC turned off some gsmers as that was one of Sony's strengths was having BC on there consoles.

 

[DeliciousSunnyD!]

For me, it definitely wasn't worth it. I had a decent library of PS2 disks, had an original 60gb PS3 model that I revived multiple times, then never bought a follow up PS3 primarily because the later models didn't have full backwards compatibility. When they stopped offering backwards compatibility, I was definitely disappointed.

Now I essentially have the first 3 generations of Playstation software laying dormant because I don't have any hardware to play them, and I've not thought it was worth it to seek out a possible original PS3 replacement.

 

[LossAversion]

hat PS3s all seem to die to YLOD.

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I can't really complain if mine dies from the YLOD after 14 years of diligent companionship.

 

[CRIMSON-XIII]

Definitely. I played the crap out of Socom COmbined Assault with the PS3 connected online. I loved that the game just worked. You start it, BC. You press online in the main menu, and it just worked. It logged into the servers from PS2 and I played online. I did that through COD MW and WaW. Until SOCOM Confrontation came out. So glad I was able to enjoy SOCOM a few more years into the PS3/

 

[Eoin]

So assuming the quote above you is accurate and there was a negligible cost saving with their removal, why the half-step of taking out the CPU on its own first? Why not keep it as-is until the policy shifted?

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The quote is accurate, and cost saving was indeed small, but even small cost savings may have been important to Sony at that point. For the PAL launch, for example, they dropped the 20GB model entirely. They later took other cost-saving steps that must have resulted in only minor savings - going from 4 USB ports to 2, for example, or dropping SACD playback, or dropping the various memory card readers.

It's possible there were other factors that we don't know about as well. They may have had a more reliable supply of PS2 GPUs than CPUs, for example.

Bear in mind that at the time, behind the scenes at Sony must have looked like a roomful of cats on fire. If a decision seems illogical and difficult to explain, it might also just be because Sony were panicking.

 

[Jon God]

I can't really complain if mine dies from the YLOD after 14 years of diligent companionship.

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Man I am so jealous. I went though 2 of those. :(

I also baby my consoles, so I am probably just unlucky.

 

[LossAversion]

Man I am so jealous. I went though 2 of those. :(

I also baby my consoles, so I am probably just unlucky.

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Yeah, I got your luck when it comes to Dualshock 4's this generation, lol.

 

[The Lord of Cereal]

I feel like the hybrid software and hardware (second gen fat PS3 if I'm not mistaken) that could still play disks was really good and had Sony supported it by fixing known glitches in popular games was an amazing compromise that couldn't have been very expensive for Sony and was net positive for the consumer. Removing PS2 disk playback was terrible especially since they only did it so they could monetize it through PS2 classics. The whole thing was just anti-consumer and has turned me away from Sony as a brand, especially seeing how Xbox was still adding games up through 2009 if I'm not mistaken and how Xbox has been very pro consumer on backwards compatibility on the Xbox One compared to the PS4 with Sony

 

[Jon God]

Yeah, I got your luck when it comes to Dualshock 4's this generation, lol.

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oh, I'm sorry mate. I have 7 DS4s, all of which have no issues.

 

[gebler]

I'm more confused they didn't continue with software BC (European launch PS3s didn't have hardware BC, just software). Was there a technical reason that was dropped?

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Yes, the original BC used hardware both for the PS2 EE (Emotion Engine) and GS (Graphics Synthesizer). A later revision removed the EE, emulating it with SW, but still had a hardware GS. That's what some people call "software BC", but it's really a misnomer as part of the BC solution still required special HW. The later revisions that dropped PS2 BC altogether had neither the EE nor the GS, and would have needed a software-only emulator. Sony had such an emulator for use with PS2 classics, but never used it for general BC (and I doubt it was ready for that, as it probably relied on per-title tweaks/patches to get sufficient performance on the games it supported).

 

[Easy Rider]

Er. Worth it? Hmm that's sort of a weird thing to answer:

hat PS3s all seem to die to YLOD.
Thin PS3s have no BC

both have their issues.

Click to shrink...

You mean the 60gb hdd. The majority of 'phat' PS3s out there have no hardware BC and don't suffer from YLOD.

 

[Issen]

Honestly? Hardware-based BC cannot be supported forever, and the official software solutions are so often imperfect, and especially inferior to emulation available on PC. When my fat PS3 succumbed to YLOD I bought a super slim without a care in the world. Hell, I was even happier with my non-BC model due to its much smaller size! Given most people I know didn't care either and were happier with the reduced console size and price, I guess I can only say it was the right call in general.

I see the worth for people who want to buy new digital copies of old games they don't already own (as long as official BC brings with it game re-releases on PSN and the like), but in my case I'm quite happy to just keep my old hardware/software in storage and continue emulating it on PC. I only collect my absolute favorite games from each system long-term and get rid of any game that's available on PC outright (unless the conversion isn't good enough or the game's original copy holds some special sentimental value). So far, storage hasn't been an issue and emulation has always progressed at a steady enough pace to serve me well. How large is the audience of people who are dying to play their old classics but don't want to explore the emulation route? How successful was PS1 BC on PS3 and how many people bought PS1 classics? (I did, ironically enough).

Since the jump to x86 though, I'd expect platform holders to keep compatibility unless at some point in the future they jump to more tailor-made hardware solutions once again, making compatibility difficult. But given the availability of multiplatform titles on PC nowadays, there's very little I want preserved that isn't available there to begin with.

 

[erlim]

There's no reason for Sony to have removed BC. It's their own garbage agenda and is completely tone deaf to what their fan base is asking for.

 

[Eoin]

Removing PS2 disk playback was terrible especially since they only did it so they could monetize it through PS2 classics.

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This wasn't the reason. PS2 compatibility was removed in 2007. At that time, Sony couldn't realistically have been confident in their ability to launch the PS2 Classics range. They didn't manage to get any PS2 games onto the Store until late 2011.

 

[Hieroph]

For me personally? Absolutely not. I'd have a lot more use for my PS3 if I still had a working PS2 BC model.

In the grand scheme of things? Maybe. Sony put themselves into a really bad position with that PS3 launch price. Maybe cutting off everything was worth more to them than keeping PS2 BC would have been.

But I sure would have been happier with PS3 if the later models still had BC.

 

[Clowns]

For me, it definitely wasn't worth it. I had a decent library of PS2 disks, had an original 60gb PS3 model that I revived multiple times, then never bought a follow up PS3 primarily because the later models didn't have full backwards compatibility. When they stopped offering backwards compatibility, I was definitely disappointed.

Now I essentially have the first 3 generations of Playstation software laying dormant because I don't have any hardware to play them, and I've not thought it was worth it to seek out a possible original PS3 replacement.

Click to shrink...

There's a new YLOD fix you should look into
Basically the problem is probably not what everyone assumed it was for over a decade.

 

[Gay Bowser]

According to The Wall Street Journal:

So to answer your question, OP:

Fuck no.

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That quote reads like spin to me, though. Like, production cost-cutting isn't something people tend to think of as a very positive thing, whereas "We just want players to focus on our excellent lineup of PS3 games!" reads as more positive. Doesn't mean that was the real reason.

It's wild how fast the PS3 hardware changed; it was a real "panic mode" scenario, where PS3 configurations were changing by the month. The PS3 launched at $599, with a short-lived $499 model with a tiny HDD and no WiFi. Exactly one year later, a model with a bigger hard drive and WiFi was $399.

Including a PS2 CPU and GPU in the PS3 just wasn't ever going to be tenable long-term, not when the competition was so much cheaper.

 

[LossAversion]

oh, I'm sorry mate. I have 7 DS4s, all of which have no issues.

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[MAX PAYMENT]

Absolutely not

 

[Ryo]

That quote reads like spin to me, though. Like, production cost-cutting isn't something people tend to think of as a very positive thing, whereas "We just want players to focus on our excellent lineup of PS3 games!" reads as more positive. Doesn't mean that was the real reason.

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I don't know, I interpreted it as "We don't want people buying cheap old PS2 games, we want them to buy $60 PS3 titles."

 

[DeliciousSunnyD!]

There's a new YLOD fix you should look into
Basically the problem is probably not what everyone assumed it was for over a decade.

Click to shrink...

Man, I don't think I still have my original PS3 honestly. I actually think I just got rid of it too, though I hadn't hooked it up in forever. Probably around when The Last of Us originally came out. :(

 

[DeliciousSunnyD!]

There's a new YLOD fix you should look into
Basically the problem is probably not what everyone assumed it was for over a decade.

Click to shrink...

Edit: whoops, double. Sorry!!

 

[Firima]

That quote reads like spin to me, though. Like, production cost-cutting isn't something people tend to think of as a very positive thing, whereas "We just want players to focus on our excellent lineup of PS3 games!" reads as more positive. Doesn't mean that was the real reason.

Click to shrink...

I don't think that was spin at all. If you want to put a positive spin on feature-gutting, "we want people to buy PS3 games instead" seems about the worst thing you could say, especially if you're going to intimate that keeping it around wasn't a financial drain on resources. You might as well say "If you want to play PS2 games, we have a console for that." I think this was PS3 launch-era Sony giving us the kind of brutal honesty they were known for at the time. After all, PS2 was still getting a flow of the kind of excellent games that PS3 would not for some time; this might have actually been a way to get developers to move on as well.

 

[The Lord of Cereal]

This wasn't the reason. PS2 compatibility was removed in 2007. At that time, Sony couldn't realistically have been confident in their ability to launch the PS2 Classics range. They didn't manage to get any PS2 games onto the Store until late 2011.

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They had hybrid BC that got rid of the emotion engine and emulated that but kept the RSX chip and while it had issues most games ran pretty well and they had that model until 2009. They announced PS2 Classics in 2010 and released a lot in mid 2011. The timeline really does make it seem like they the removed the RSX chip and also disk based backwards compatibility just so they could try to monetize it for more money

 

[PianoBlack]

Er. Worth it? Hmm that's sort of a weird thing to answer:

hat PS3s all seem to die to YLOD.
Thin PS3s have no BC

both have their issues.

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To be fair, my phat died from a red screen error, not YLOD. And then when I called support they told me I had hacked my console (spoiler: I hadn't).

 

[Deleted member 5028]

According to The Wall Street Journal:



So to answer your question, OP:

Fuck no.

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My fave fact about that generation is that it shows how good the PS2 was compared to PS3

 

[Megatron]

For Sony? Yes it was they needed to do whatever they could to keep the price down.

For me as a consumer? No.

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No it wasn't. Software emulation didn't cost them anything. They already had that in EU systems. Always felt like a spite move to me.

 

[Agent X]

The timeline really does make it seem like they the removed the RSX chip and also disk based backwards compatibility just so they could try to monetize it for more money

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This doesn't make sense. You are ignoring the fact that they retained PS1 disc compatibility, even though they also offered a large number of downloadable PS1 games for sale.

 

[EvilBoris]

No it wasn't. Software emulation didn't cost them anything. They already had that in EU systems. Always felt like a spite move to me.

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The EU models still had some hardware doing audio emulation I believe, they just didn't have the GPU hardware.

 

[Perkin_Warbeck]

I've been disappointed that Sony hasn't even ported their PSOne classic line of games on PSN to PS4. I never would have expected PS3 or even 2 back compat, but not getting whatever PS1 emulator they created up and running on PS4? Come on...

Here's hoping the PS5 is the promised land of back compat. I don't dare to hope for more than PS4, but even that would be very welcome.

 

[Jedi2016]

Not for me. I was stupid and sold my PS2 when I got the PS3, didn't think I needed it any more, even though I kept all my games. And then the fucking thing died on me, after they'd stopped production on the original model, and the Slim didn't have it. Lesson learned.

 

[SpotAnime]

Also, they wanted us to all rebuy the games as PS2 Classics. If PS2 emulation wasn't important to them, why then sell us the games again?

 

[dabri]

I'm more confused they didn't continue with software BC (European launch PS3s didn't have hardware BC, just software). Was there a technical reason that was dropped?

Click to shrink...

No. It was a move to push more software sales.

 

[Strike]

Maybe in the short term, but their alternatives didn't make up for it.

 

[Acetown]

I believe they always intended to transition to full software emulation but in the end they couldn't achieve high enough compatibility, it was good enough to release a small selection of PS2 classics I suppose, not all of them were perfectly reproduced. From what I've read the PS2 hardware actually outranks the PS3 in gpu bandwidth.

 

[Segaswirl]

No.

My PS3 slim is mostly used as a way of playing PS1 games these days. It being able to play PS2 games would have been nice.

A console having a feature in the beginning then removing it never really sit well with me.

What a shitshow.

 

[skeezx]

they didn't have a choice if msrp just had to go down

everybody and their dog had a ps2 at the time, it was before 'ecosystem consolidation' was as huge a deal. through the lens of 2020 it seems like an egregious thing but back then it was kind of "whatever"