Author: by Staff

Sony has announced its PlayStation 2 backwards compatibility list for the European PS3, revealing that, under the new 1.6 firmware to be released on March 22nd, 1,782 of the 2,451 PS2 games released in Europe will work on the PlayStation 3. An official FAQ page on the European site for PlayStation.com now has a full list of each title and their degree of compatibility, with a code either indicating 'no known issues', 'minor issues', or 'noticeable issues' for each listed game. In addition, a number of recommendations are made for playing PS2 games on the European PlayStation 3, which lacks the 'Emotion Engine' chip included in the Japanese and American launch versions of the console: "You avoid connecting any non-essential USB peripherals to your PS3... You avoid the use of "60Hz" and network modes (which may experience noticeable graphical corruption not present in the main game)... You should skip optional FMV sequences (a small number of games have graphical corruption in one or more video sequences)... A maximum of seven players can play (non-network) multiplayer PS2 games." In a statement released alongside the announcement, David Reeves, President of SCEE, commented: “Our engineers have been working overtime, and have succeeded in delivering a significant number of playable PS2 titles for the European launch.” He continued: “We will be adding additional titles to this list in future firmware upgrades, but as we have made clear before, in the future our resources will be increasingly focused on developing new services and entertainment features exclusively for PS3, rather than on delivering PS2 backwards compatibility.” A look at some of the more popular PlayStation 2 franchises reveals a mixed assortment of compatibility. With first party series Ratchet & Clank noticeably absent, and issues with Jak and Final Fantasy volumes, Sony appear thus far to be not taking the explicit title-by-hit-title approach used by Microsoft in its own software-based compatibility.