Comments on: Sony Patents Method To Emulate PS2 On PS3

By: cs

cs — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:17:43 +0000

Xbox 360 emulation is a joke, if you cant make a title run 100% like it should don’t emulate it at all. Best example Red Dead Revolver and the missing textures.

By: The Gremlin

The Gremlin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:48:23 +0000

Xbox smu is very, very limited. It plays far less games than PS3 emu. It’s similar to bleem, tailored to specific games.

Also, it’s been dropped, so no additional games will be supported. Part of the “drop the original xbox as fast as possible” policy at MS.

By: tang

tang — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:24:35 +0000

I’m still impressed that the 360 can emulate an original Xbox, (a more powerful machine than the PS2). Yet the supposedly “superior” Cell based PS3 cant emulate PS2 let alone something more powerful…

Supercomputer indeed!

By: transcoder general

transcoder general — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:20:03 +0000

IIRC:

-The original PS3 had a complete PS2 chipset (EE and GS). Compatible with ~99.9% PS2 stuff.

-The next revision had -part- of the PS2 chipset with the other part emulated in software. Compatible with <99.9% (much less) PS2 stuff.

-The latest PS3 has no PS2 hardware. No PS2 compatibility – yet…

If Sony are looking at making all PS3 versions capable of playing PS2 software, this would mean full software-based emulation (half-assed or not?), for it to work with the last version PS3.

I suspect this will be a download service with a “selection” of PS2 games modified/patched to be usable with PS3-hosted software emulation.

Just a guess.

By: Jamie Thomson

Jamie Thomson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:49:18 +0000

I really hope they do go through with this – one of the things that I was impressed with when I upgraded from PS1 to PS2 was the backwards compatibility. My only regret in getting my PS3 was not trying to track down a 60GB, but I figured that they’d eventually patch it in. Here’s hoping still.

By: Adam Steel

Adam Steel — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:46:59 +0000

The emulation for PAL was done in software. It actually took more effort to take it out than to leave it in.

Also, Sony openly admitted it was because they wanted people to buy (more expensive) PS3 games instead.

By: The Gremlin

The Gremlin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:23:18 +0000

My undestanding is that the PS2 emulation on European 60Gb was a hybrid, part software part hardware (as in the software expected certain hardware support). My guess is that later PS3 models had that hardware support removed.

Software emulation, specially of a complex system like the PS2 is extremely difficult.

By: Taylor

Taylor — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:55:29 +0000

I’m guessing a cost/price thing. They dropped a few features for the 40gb. Less card/usb slots and the backwards compatibility was dropped. Cost less to make, therefore they could “afford” to sell it for less money.

By: Grassdragon

Grassdragon — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:53:17 +0000

I actually had to go and buy a new PS2, since getting an original run PS3 here is so damn expensive.

Best decision I made all year, since then I got games like Okami and Psychonauts that I never had time for with my original PS2.

Would love Sony forever if they released a proper emulator in the firmware. Let’s all cross our fingers for it being in 3.00.

By: mambodog

mambodog — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:25:14 +0000

Saying “Not half-assed software emulation” is a somewhat deceptive choice of words, because that implies that all software emulation is half-assed, and this new method is not software emulation. Which it is. Unless they are putting a new PS2 chip into new PS3s, it most definitely is software emulation. All they’ve done is build a better emulator (possibly leveraging a new emulation technique).