Game Stooge

PlayStation 2 Library to PSN Rumors

• Scribbled on September 22nd, 2009 by Jordan Lund
• Filed in PlayStation Network, Retro, Rumor Mill, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3

A new PlayStation 3 controversy is brewing. The latest grist for the rumor mill can be seen here and here. The source would appear to be leaked meeting minutes between Sega and Sony, Joystiq has a copy of the leaked memo here.

The long and short of this rumor is that Sony wants to sell digital copies of every single PlayStation 2 game through the Playstation Network (PSN). The other big point of the memo is “DC Digital Titles” – presumably Dreamcast Digital games – with a note of a long period of exclusivity implying that these Dreamcast images might be available on more than one platform. There’s no doubt Sony would love to be able to do such a thing, after all they get no money from the used PS2 market and an online back catalog would compete directly with used game sales.

PS3 owners would benefit from having more games to play and something to put on that nice big hard drive they come with.

But I have more than one problem with this rumor.

First, the date of the memo is August 5th/6th, which put it 2 months after E3, 10 days before the Game Developers Conference in Cologne, Germany and a month before PAX. There was no mention or hint of any of these rumors at any of these shows. Even when Sony stepped up and finally announced the most poorly kept secret in the gaming industry this year, the PS3 Slim, there was no mention of any backwards compatibility. In fact, quite the contrary, they were adamant that there would be no BC at all.

Second, the reason for the loss of backwards compatibility has to do with the reduction of PS3 hardware. The inital PS3 units achieved backwards compatibility by including the old PS2 “Emotion Engine” chip and graphics synthesizer. In the first round of cost-cutting, Sony removed the Emotion Engine, stripped down the PS2 graphics synthesizer and managed backwards compatibility with a 1/2 hardware, 1/2 software solution.

The PS3 Slim, along with the other less compatible models, have NEITHER the Emotion Engine NOR the original PS2 graphics synthesizer meaning that any compatibility would have to be done 100% in software, something which it seems the PS3 might be unable to do.

Third, we’ve been down this road before in the rumor mill ever since Sega became a software only shop, back when Dreamcast games were going to be ported to the PS2 and Xbox. There have been rumors of Saturn games as well, emulation of which would be a nightmare given the oddball complexities of Saturn hardware.

Now don’t get me wrong, like I say above I’m sure this is something Sony would love to be able to do. The question is if the hardware will allow them to pull it off. Until then, I’d remind everyone to take the rumor with a grain of salt, “playing x games on y console” could just about replace the “boy who cried wolf” metaphor in gaming circles.