It most certainly is more important, especially in the post-launch lulls that are normally exerienced (both Wii and PS3 are in them right now actually). I know that since I bought my Wii I have bought 3 new Wavebirds and 3 new Gamecube games, plus I have gone back and played a bunch of old Gamecube games that I had totally forgotten about. Backwards compatibility helps in the transition between consoles, and give the new console a huge back catalog of titles to claim as its own.

For me the Wii is already and always will be the best console ever made. Some may scream fanboy because of that, but listen to my reasoning; currently my Wii can play:

Every main Resident Evil game

Every main Zelda game

Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, and Super Mario Sunshine

Every Genesis Sonic game

Every Mega Man game, plus every Mega Man X game (or almost since there was some PS2 one or something)

Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2

These alone make it the best system ever for me, and most of them are a direct result of having complete backwards compatibility. And with the VC getting updated constantly I will soon have every Mario game and a host of other great titles. The PS3 has Resistance and whatever PS1 games they let you download.

Sony needs to learn from Microsoft's mistakes. Semi-backwards compatibility is close to no backwards compatibility at all. Someone, somewhere will have their favorite game left off of the list and they will not like it.

If Final Fantasy XII, Okami, Dragon Quest VII, and Disgaea 2 have anything to say about it, yeah, it's pretty damn important.

Yeah...I'm actually wanting to buy a PS3 now before this hardware inevitably comes to the US. I mean, we all knew Sony was full of themselves, but this is just idiotic. I've had one PS2 die out on me, and eventually the two others I have will go too. What then, Sony, I'm supposed to get so turned on by your big black grill that I forget about every other game I owned? Yeah, I don't think so.

The prospect of never being able to play my PS2 games in the future is not an exciting one, and I'm more than a little jumpy about what's to come in the future on this matter. Backwards compatibility has always been important: My DS sees more action as a GBA, my Wii as a Gamecube, and awhile ago, my PS2 as a PSX. What I can't believe is how Sony can even think this is a good move after hearing all the negative press Microsoft gets for skimping on it.

The default answer to this seems to be "just keep your old PS2 and stop whining", but I don't think that's a very convincing argument for why Sony should be allowed to get away with this.

For starters it requires you to have two consoles hooked up and if you're using component cables for both you'll either need to swap cables all the time or pay for a switch box. Then you've got to have the PS2's joypads trailing across the room as well as the PS3's pads lying around. So you lose the convenience of being able to use the PS3's wireless pads, the ability to turn the machine on at the joypad, etc. People are always saying they never use the BC, but personally I'm always replaying old PS1 games, just recently I've been replaying MGS1 again. And finally in some people's cases their PS2 is on its last legs, why should they go out and pay for a new slim PS2 when Sony promised the PS3 would be fully backwards compatible and made a big show of criticising the 360's BC? This is a big pain in the ass.

All round we're paying more than the US/Japan for a system that does less. Of course I'm sure this cost cutting measure will be passed on to the US/Japan once the current stock stops lingering on shelves but that doesn't change that Sony lied. If they'd said 6 months ago "Sorry guys, we're going to take the BC out, we don't think it's a big feature and it costs a lot of money" there would be less of a problem. But quietly announcing this for Europe/Australasia only and not telling us what games will work? Why not send out some KY Jelly with every PS3, it might make it more comfortable for PS3 owners to sit down.

What I can't believe is how Sony can even think this is a good move after hearing all the negative press Microsoft gets for skimping on it.

Indeed! Sony did generated some of that negative press:

"...the PS3 will feature backwards compatibility with PS and PS2 games from day one. I'm emphasizing this because, from what I hear, there are some platforms that haven't been able to completely do this. It's costly in terms of hardware, but we'd rather [invest] firmly on compatibility from the beginning, rather than to have issues later on." - Krazy Ken

What a flip flopper, Michael Ephraim put your sorry excuse you call your pride aside and admit it:

You Screwed Up.

A few people I know who are Sony fanboys recently sold their PS2's for the upcoming PS3. But after talking to them today they said they're looking to get them back.

Just another reason why I will not be getting a PS3, you just dug your problem hole even deeper.

I really would not worry about it unless you just have to play Barbie's Horse Adventures.

Sony just makes me so angry, I wanted to like their console, I really did - I thought blu-ray was great and free online play has to be a plus.

But they seem to be trying to fuck everything up.

Sure, I don't mind it that they decided to use software emulation - cuts the costs, and will possibly allow them to make older PS2 games actually look better.

But then they go and say that no one will give a fuck about old PS2 games cause "the PS3s so great". Well, when I spend $120 on a game (FFXII), this is not what I want to hear.

How can I support you PS3?

YOU COST $1200! !nd I don't know what sony are doing because they seem to be MAKING THE CONSOLE WORSE!

Well fuck you Sony. Fuck you.

P.S. Sorry for my swearing, it just annoys me how $#@*ing dumb sony is.

@Warren DeMontague:

Your comment hadn't be up when I posted but that just shows that we can't rely on them, they even go back on their own word :

"...the PS3 will feature backwards compatibility with PS and PS2 games from day one. I'm emphasizing this because, from what I hear, there are some platforms that haven't been able to completely do this. It's costly in terms of hardware, but we'd rather [invest] firmly on compatibility from the beginning, rather than to have issues later on." - Krazy Ken

I hope someone can save the PS3. It really, really, really has to get a killer app soon. "How to kill a brand" - for sure.

@Konman72: I'm with you. After picking up Zelda and Raving Rabbits (on a whim), I'm out of games. So, not having any console before this (ever) I bought Viewtiful Joe 1 and 2, and Fire Emblem. All off Amazon's new and used games section, all for less than 10 dollars each. I got some shitty controllers from a pawn shop, and I downloaded Mario 64. I'm having fun with my Wii even though their aren't many games out.

I am, however, enjoying watching a Fortune 500 company flounder like a fish out of water. That's not fanboyism speaking, I just think it's hilarious.

I think PS3 compatibility is important, but when you look at what the wii and 360 are doing with new games, digital content and so on, that specific functionality may not be as important as previously felt.

Seems to me Sony will not listen to their consumers unless their consumers stop buying the ps3. I hate his argument, too. Maybe in a year or two that wold be a valid point, but right now all I'm playing is ps2 games.

I've already got one, so I can't participate in the "don't buy a ps3" movement...but I'm doing my part by "not buying any ps3 games or blu-ray movies", and "complaining on this website".

I have neither a PS3 or a 360 but holy geezerific batman sony is just finding new ways to suck elephant balls. Its almost as if they're pushing me REALLY hard to buy a 360 or wii. I'm confused as to how that fits in with their masterplan. Maybe some genius move like in chess where you purposely lose all your pieces leaving only your King to wipe out all your opponents pieces.

Ever hear of that strategy? its absolutely AMAZING.

...Cause i've never ever heard of that shit being done, so that'd make it pretty damn amazing.

BC was one of the biggest reasons I was considering getting a PS3. I don't own a PS2, but I wish I did. I got a gamecube, and by the time I realized I wanted a PS2, Next gen was just about here, so I waited to see if the PS3 would be good, assuming it would have all the backwards compatibility I wanted.

There isn't a single PS3 exclusive that I want to play. I was banking on there being more games in the future, like for the PS2. But now Sony can't keep exclusivity for beans.

I kept away from the PS3 because of the price, to wait for some good news, and it never came. The PS3 hasn't shown itself to be worth it, but I still entertained the notion that I would get one eventually. For now, though, I'm excited enough for what I can get for the 360 that I finally went out and got one recently.

Compatibility for the 360 doesn't matter that much to me, because the 360 is already building a great library. But for me, the PS3 was as much about the PS2 library as it was about the future.

But no, Sony went and screwed it up. BC isn't important, they say. It looks like I'll be buying a PS2 for 130 at some point, because Sony is sucking every reason to get a PS3 away.

So is it just me who really doesn't give a toss about this?

I mean not because I'm not getting a PS3 (that's a factor obviously), but if I did get one, I wouldn't care even if it can't play any PS2 games?

I wouldn't be paying £425 for uber graphics in order to play games for a £40 console. If there aren't that many games for PS3 yet so what? I'd just leave it turned off and do other things until the next good game comes out. I mean, I have books.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a good thing (emulation = fine, but it sounds like they're preparing the way for a really low success rate on it) and I understand there are plenty of people who would want to replay their old games, or pick up games cheap if they didn't have a PS2 before. But I'm kind of surprised that's everyone. Is it because kicking Sony when they're down is kind of an infectious mob activity, or does everyone who complains about this really genuinely intend to play PS2 games on their expensive power-guzzling new console?

It seems that Sony is willing to forget it's entire back catalogue in the name of the PS3. It's disturbing that a company is so willing to abandon such a strong pedigree.

Backwards compatibilty is Nintendo's weapon of choice - The DS can play GBA games, the Wii can play GC games and the VC's library is expanding by the week. I said it in another post a while ago: Nintendo is making the most admirable steps towards immortalising; preserving our games and I suppose our experiences so that in the future when all us gamers are sat around our Super Thunder Control Miesters with our sprogs they can see what we saw, hear what we heard, play what we played and say:

"You played on a screen? using *this*?"

But seriously, BC! er, FTW! ahem.

@Konman72: Yeah I agree. I totally understand and applaud your reasons.

@quen:

It's because:

A) Sony continued their fine tradition of promising one thing and decided it wasn't worth delivering on their promise. People tend not to accept being lied to when you're being asked to pay £400+ for it.

B) Sony are asking PAL gamers to wait longer AND pay more than Japan and the US for a machine that actually does less.

C) Sony just make it so easy to abuse them that no sane human being can resist the temptation.

Weren't games supposed to be considered art? Well, like most types of art, games should be accessible whenever we want, end of story.
If I like a book, painting or sculpture very much and I take good care of it, it'll probably last for more than a century. Audio and video can be converted into newer formats. Now, what about games?
Games depend on equipment from a specific company. Different from other arts, they have a lifetime. You buy a game today knowing that you'll probably not be able to play it twenty years from now. It doesn't matter how much you love it and took care of it, videogame consoles hardly will last for much more than a decade, if even so. Controllers won't last for half of that.

Now for the question. Aren't we supposed to be able to play our loved games whenever we want? Or should we just live it through our memories?

I really wish I could go back to my favorite games from the past, even if I'll have the "hmmm, that was much better in my mind" feeling, like sometimes happen when we rewatch a movie or cartoon we loved as kids.

Backward compatibility at least extends our little buddy's lifetime for another generation. And that, to me, is definately important.

@quen:

does everyone who complains about this really genuinely intend to play PS2 games on their expensive power-guzzling new console?

There are many reasons for backwards compatibility: You don't want to have too many consoles and controllers and cables hooked up to your TV, your PS2 doesn't work quite right anymore, you want to move your PS2 to your second TV or sell it or give it to a friend...

In my case, I haven't owned a PS2 during this console generation, but there are some games I would love to play - Okami, Katamari Damacy, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War, Dragon Quest, God Hand, Psychonauts, to name a few. Motorstorm looks interesting, and since I have a HD beamer, having some Bluray discs would have been neat.

None of these reasons are on their own enough for me to buy a PS3, but together, they make the PS3 look like not such a bad offering. However, now that Sony doesn't guarantee that I can actually play those PS2 games on my PS3, I'm simply going to pick up a cheap PS2 and be done with it.

You know, I'm almost certain BC was a major selling point of the PS3.

And what do you know, it was.

I also remember a good deal of smirking in the direction of Microsoft for their unfortunate exercise in saving money.

Uhh... BC is VERY important when your launch line-up is a formulaic FPS, a pretty-but-middling racer and a bunch of year-old 360 games. Zing!

Back before the price and the rest of the PS3's details were announced, I was going to get one because it'd be awesome to upscale my old PS2 games with some AA thrown on. God knows they need it. Then they announced that it wouldn't upscale, wouldn't add any filtering, and the biggest thing, the system is $600. At that point, I lost all faith in the system.

The only positive thing they can do now is at least add some AA and force 480p if they're going to use software. Too bad it doesn't look like they'll put the same kind of effort MS is putting into it's software emulation.

@Big_Mac: I take all those points (Sony probably 'think' they didn't announce backward compatibility in Australia and Europe, because those announcements were at the time of the US/Japan release... but 'the Internet? what's that?' is not a justifiable excuse for this kind of thing). So you're saying that there are people who don't really care about BC but object to the 'let's reduce our costs while simultaneously charging twice as much as in japan' approach... fair enough.

@L_K_M: Sure, I'm not saying that everyone here is overreacting (particularly as it was pretty arsey of Sony to keep it quiet up until now), just that surely there's somebody else who doesn't intend to play PS2 games in their PS3 (supposing they were to get one).

You know, when I heard about this I jokingly said to a friend, "Just watch... they'll try to play it off as if backwards compatibility is actually living in the past and not that important!"

Just... wow.

Backwards Compatability is's MASSIVELY important to make people feel better about that $huge amount purchase, since they can trade in their old machine for the new one without having to worry about their old games being worthless.

Plus, it saves a lot of space if you dont have to have the biggest video game system of all time next to your PS2 taking up even more space.

I have 40 cube games and almost 50 PS2 games. I bought all the PS2 games expecting that when my PS2 finally dies I might be able to afford a PS3 to replace it. I use the BC all the time on the Wii to play my cube games as I gave my cube to my brother so that he could experience some of the greatest games on the cube. To me BC is a must, I don't particularly care to pay full price for my games. I don't mind waiting until the games become greatest hits as with Sony you can expect the games will drop in price within a year of release. The cube games (most anyway) held their price for a lot longer so most I bought used or bought at full price. So far my Wii collection has all been "new" and full price though.

Anyway this makes me sick that their taking the cheap way out. I've never been a huge fan of emulators as they tend to always have some issue's with games. I have purchased quite a few VC games though and thankfully Nintendo uses it's Mario Club to test each and every one of these games again.

Do you think Sony will have the talent pool to test their emulator as reliably as Nintendo? I don't... Sony to me has never meant quality (glitches in games wise). It's always meant quantity.

And the hits just keep coming! It's amusing that this bad news makes me feel better about my relatively unreasonable purchase of a ps3 (I'm sure they'll find a way to cut me down). Until VF5 came out last week, my ps3 was used exclusively for ps2 games and probably will continue to do that the new year. Oh, Sony... it's time for an intervention.

Sony is bleeding financially, and they are losing money on PS3 systems. If they remove the BC chip, not only do they save the manufacturing costs, but they also get another sale of a system that actually DOES make money if you want to play old playstation games.

On a side note, I KNEW I was going to get a PS3. KNEW. Now, not so sure. Hopefully the dawn will break on this bad news day for PS3 owners and hopefuls (It's bad news for owners if it scares buyers away keeping the user base small), and new and exciting games come out to justify the purchase. I now longer like Sony, but I still love games, and I would hate for a fellow gamer to be out of hard earned cash if the system flops, let alone talented developers.

The great thing about "let them eat cake" attitudes is that they're typically followed by a beheading. With any luck, a financial Bastille Day will be just around the corner for Sony... heaven knows they have it coming after twelve years of increasing arrogance.

JR

I'm no business major, but I'm pretty sure when you continue to do every single thing wrong... people become less and less interested in your project.

Really though, Sony, it's time for an intervention. Abuse is never the answer, and your poor fans are full of brusies and scars and are rightully leaving you and going to their mother's.

So, um, Gears of War anyone?

Sony's arrogance knows no bounds. Hopefully the corporate entity we know will die the long death. They had no business managing online games, selling consumer electronics and music at the same time - however they managed to do all equally poorly. Poor, poor Planetside. What you could have been.

I remember when Sony made quality stereo equipment. How the times change.

If they pull this crap in the US I can tell you I may never get a PS3. No rumble, added on motion crap, losing tons of exclusives, and now you want to take away my BC?

@RPGZero: Well believe it dude, they've already said that Europe is just setting the precedent and that ALL new PS3 hardware made from now on will have no Emotion Engine and therefore b0rked BC.

An American buys a PS3 now.

In six months Sony announce removal of Backwards Compatibility.

What happens when their PS3 breaks and can only be replaced under extended warranty with one that doesn't have the chip?

@PhotoBoy: "And finally in some people's cases their PS2 is on its last legs, why should they go out and pay for a new slim PS2 when Sony promised the PS3 would be fully backwards compatible and made a big show of criticising the 360's BC?"

Fantastic point! I am in the same boat. My PS2 won't read games on CD-ROMs, and I figure that when the price is right for a PS3, it will alleviate my worries, and I won't have to pony up for a new PS2.

IIRC, Didn't Nintendo say that every system they make going forward from NGC will feature full backwards compatibility?

Actually, in this part of the world (Oz, NZ) backwards compatibility is *more* important than most of the PS3's other markets.

One reason is that friends of mine are still playing some PS1 titles on their PS2 (rg domestic sports titles that don't get re-developed often enough). Take away their PS2 games on their PS3 and there is even less use in a PS3.

Another aspect is that all the whiz-bang hype features that the PS3 has means less around here than anywhere else. HDTV doesn't really exist in any sensible numbers, and broadband is a bit of a joke.

So yeah, if Sony think that backwards compat won't be an issue then they have another thing coming. Of course what will happen will be confusion around BC, and most PS1/2 owners will think their game probably will work, and so get a PS3 and then discover the reality.

@MattyD: ARGH! I made the mistake of getting a 360 before it had its BC and I'm still regretting it. I doubt they'll ever get the games I want BC (the Project Gothams, Panzer Dragoon Orta, etc.) and now here is Sony doing the same damn thing after promising to do better. I'm not buying a gimped system and I'm not rushing out to grab one now with nothing I want out. I feel so bad for those stuck with one of these.

2 years ago I was sure that the only system I wouldn't own was a 360. Funny how things can change.