Game Stooge

Interview With Sony: Confirms PAL Warning Logo

• Scribbled on February 27th, 2007 by Derrick Schommer
• Filed in Sony PlayStation 3

If you buy a PS3 and it has a little sticker that says “PAL” instead of “NTSC” you can be satisfied knowing you’re about to buy a downgraded PlayStation 3. By downgraded,we mean - limited backwards compatibility.

Sony’s PR department says:

“The PS3 launching in Europe is every bit as powerful as the PS3s available currently in North America and Japan.”

They do, however, fail to define “power.” We’re assuming they speak of sheer processing power and not value-added power. The Nintendo Wii is powerful in its draw to bring in a huge audience and larger demographic. The Xbox 360’s power lies in its awesome Live networking.

Originally, we thought the PS3’s huge advantage was full backwards compatibility. Another interesting way to ask the question…

Does this mean that the PS2 hardware chips have been removed completely and replaced with software-only emulation?

The original PS3 used the Emotion Engine/Graphics Synthesizer to emulate PS2 titles. With the latest European specification we have removed the Emotion Engine, retaining the graphics chip. This has an impact on the number of PS2 titles that will be backwards compatible.

So, is Europe to blame for this problem? We’re not exactly sure what they say in their specifications but we’re betting it isn’t “Sony cannot have back-compat.”

How will consumers be able to tell the difference between the fully compatible launch model available in America and Japan and the new degraded model?

On the external packaging of the PS3 there will be a small ‘PAL’ logo to denote that the PS3 is built for the European market (North American and Japanese models have a ‘NTSC’ logo).

There you have it, if you see that PAL logo you can be sure you’re not getting what the rest of the world got. Maybe you can import them without being attacked by Sony like Lik-Sang was not too long ago with some other Sony devices…

(Thanks, 1up.com)