Game Stooge

Week Wrap-up And The Sony EURO PR Nightmare

• Scribbled on March 3rd, 2007 by Derrick Schommer
• Filed in Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation Network, Sony PlayStation 3, Stooge Weekend Review, Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox Live Marketplace

This week was full of news and rumors with Microsoft coming out on top of the most positive news. They’re talking about the next big Worms release on XBLA, Games for Windows beta and many more. Nintendo has a new Sims game coming for the DS and Wii and Ocarina of Time hits Virtual Consoles in the United States.

Where was Sony in all of this? Releasing some cool news about Mortal Kombat II and Tekken 5 on the PlayStation Network and other Kotaku rumors. New Phantasy Star Universe details for the PlayStation 2 were revealed as well! Then we have European issues…

The sheer volume of articles, editorials and news posts about Sony’s “screw up” in Europe are all over the Net. The issue: less backwards compatibility than the Japanese and North American systems.

Why is this such a bad thing? First, Sony is vague on the details saying “fewer” backwards compatibility titles than elsewhere. Second issue, physically changing the hardware to remove the Emotion Engine from the PlayStation 3.

“By the end of September 2006, there were 8,181 PS2 titles released worldwide (4,554 in Asia, 1,319 in North America, and 2,308 in Europe), accounting for cumulative production shipments of 1.127 billion units.” -wikipedia

Looking at the released titles for the PlayStation 2 you can easily see Europe has more PS2 titles than North America. Who really should have the gimped Emotion Engine? Apparently, the United States if you’re going to overall lack of titles.

As gameindustry.biz says “how important is backwards compatibility anyway?” They’re statement is right on… it is very important to Sony because Sony has the most titles on the market. They’ve got five times the amount of titles compared to the Xbox console which means backwards compatibility is a big deal.

The back-compat problem seems to pale in comparison to the underlying issue: Sony has re-designed a cheaper PlayStation 3 console for Europe with less features compared to other countries and in some areas, a higher price. Regardless to the problem at hand, the fact that Europe is receiving an “inferior” model upsets more than a few people.

Will North America see the gimped PS3 in the future or is Europe the only one getting the shaft? Perhaps Sony would have saved some press fire had they simply cut the Emotion Engine out of the lower grade model and left the high grade model alone?