New information from the Japanese magazine Ultra One reveals that Sony intends to include the PS2 chipset with each PS3 manufactured… until a proper PS2 emulator is developed, that is.
When Sony announced that its PlayStation 3 would be backwards compatible with both PS2 and the PSone, it was thought (and Sony indicated) that the next-gen console would provide this functionality through emulation. However, a new report in the Japanese technology magazine Ultra One (partially translated by IGN) suggests that backwards compatibility with the PS2 is actually achieved through physical hardware, not emulation.
According to the magazine, the PS3 hardware is currently designed to include the PS2 chipset, meaning the Emotion Engine CPU and Graphic Synthesizer combo chip that is found in the slim model PS2. The PS3 is already quite expensive to manufacture, and incorporating yet another chipset certainly can’t help the situation. That said, the report goes on to say that Sony plans to remove the PS2 chipset from the PS3 once their engineers complete work on an efficient PS2 emulator.
Of course, if the PS3 is playing PS2 games directly on PS2 hardware, it’s hard to say if there will be any visual upgrade when playing PS2 titles on the PS3.
Some other interesting details came from Ultra One as well. Izumi Kawanishi, head of Sony’s Software Platform Development Division, told the magazine that the PS3 as announced is “nothing more than just the basic system.” Sony may release models with still larger hard disks or upgraded network features, but the CPU clock speed and memory specs will not change, of course, since all PS3s must run the same games. The PS3 also comes equipped with a “large amount of flash memory,” which will be used to house the operating system and all future system updates.
Sony also assured the magazine that all PS3 models will always be compatible with all PS3 games. You may recall that when Sony introduced newer PS2 hardware, the new models were incompatible with some of the older software. This won’t be a problem with PS3, however, because the console will be able to download patches.