Hallelujah!

Wait, I don't have a PS3. Oh well, still good news.

Praise be to the Sony firmware team! Forever and ever, amen.

Nice! Time to import that $320 PS3 from Japan. ;)

Yea gotta give them props for finally fixing this. I don't have a PS3 anymore (gave it to a needy friend...ok so more like sold it to a desperate friend while laughing all the way to the bank!)

Er anyways good news for the PS3 people as I was starting to feel sorry for them in a big way. Pity isn't a pretty thing.

Anyone know what else this fixes?

Wasn't the PS3 supposed to cure cancer or something??
What happend to that?

You can now choose a picture from your Photo section for your User Icon.

The PS Store browsing also seems a little faster. Also, you can automatically auto-sort music files/folders.

Wasn't the PS3 supposed to cure cancer or something??
What happend to that?

Folding@Home, which isn't exclusive to the PS3 by any means; what I mean is, nobody made this claim.

@Miniboss:

So...being able to play your games from a $129 console on your $320 console justifies the price of that console...how? :)

Just sayin', if all you wanted it for was to play PS2 games in their original mode of presentation...just get a PS2 :)

So does the PS3 "upscale" all PS1 and PS2 games into progressive scan? Does it look nicer than the original systems when it does it?

I wish they'd gone the Microsoft route and included some resolution improvements, while the list of backwards compatible games on the 360 is still too short, what there is looks fantastic in 720p.

Have Sony fixed that problem of games being displayed in 480p if your HDTV doesn't support a specific resolution yet?

"Just sayin', if all you wanted it for was to play PS2 games in their original mode of presentation...just get a PS2 :)"

No, no, no. Weeks ago people were bitching and moaning at how bad ps2 games looked on the ps3, how horrible backwards compatibility is on it.
Now that it's fixed, people aren't allowed to be negative about it being fixed.
Though I was wondering how long it would take.. took a little longer than I thought.

Wow this is awesome. Although it hung when I tried to quit out of Devil Kings on the PS2. Still--looks great!

@photoboy...

What exactly is xbox doing with an upscaler.. I mean there's only so many xbox titles that are actually BC w/ the system.. (like you said) so I'm thinking... was it really worth it for them to even include a upscaler, if they knew they weren't going to be totally dedicated to ensuring that even 'most' of their xbox games were compatible w/ the 360.

Choice... 360.. w/ upscaler, and only some games.. from the previous generation...

or ps3, w/o upscaler, and all previous games from the previous two generations being compatible..

Quick question.. I'll check tomorrow, but does this mean that FINALLY, my FFXII jaggies are gonna go away? I mean, it was only cut scenes that sucked, but still...

I <3 my PS3, but I had to put down 12 until they released this update.. just hoping it's what I'm hoping it is :D

I'm glad to hear they fixed the BC (though my modded PS2 is snickering anyway) but I wonder whether it does upscale or not. Right now I've got S-Video going into my HDTV from my PS2 and it's obviously not as good as a progressive-scan+component-cable combo but it's pretty damn good. My guess is that the games which looked worse than they would on a PS2 are now just at-par?

Thom- The upscaler in the 360 is not just used for BC. It allows any 360 game to also be displayed at any given resolution. Hooray for us with non-720p HDTV's!
Cheers!

@Thomaticus

The upscaler is used for the 360 games, it allows us to run any 720p games in 1080i or even now 1080p if we are stupid enough to want to do that (it seems to look just the same as 720).

It wasn't for backward compat just something that allowed better resolution on older games as a side effect of it being present in the machine.

"Thanks for fixing this, Sony!"

Um, that really isn't a "fix". It's an added feature that simply didn't exist before.

When you fix something, it is implied that the feature should have existed before, but was somehow poorly implemented or in other ways "broken".

I wonder why the 360 won't upscale DVDs then?

i was at the 'threespace' PS3 convention in london, where Phil Harrison came to and mentioned that there will 2 major updates to the PS3, for or before the euro launch. i hope this isn't what they call a 'major' update. its more like a fix.

@Thomaticus

Personally I'd like both! :) I shouldn't perhaps have used the term upscaling though, as I believe it's actually rendering the Xbox1 games in 720p, not just upscaling a 420p image.

It's hard to say whether the upscaling is worth it right now, as MS still have many games to add. But they've done a pretty good job of getting the majority of the "good" games working, and Ninja Gaiden looks like a next gen game in 720p. I think it's just a few Sega games and Riddick left that I'd like to have emulated and then the system will have everything worth playing from the Xbox1 (for me anyway).

I'm not so bothered about Sony upscaling PS1 games as they would probably just show the polygon gaps and texture warping more, but for the PS2 I find the output extremely blurry, even in 480p. When you compare the PS2's output to the GC, Xbox and even DC it's image quality leaves a lot to be desired. I'd just like to play Shadow of the Colossus or MGS3 with a sharper image.

I don't even have a PS3 and am not even sure if I am gonna get one, but this was a much needed update. My friend plays Phantasy Star Universe on his PS3 and it looked like crap just like all the other PS2 and PSOne games, so he will be ecstatic to hear this news and get this update.

Good fix Sony, but it still is the first thing you have done right in a long time, so try to make it a new trend for you.

-WPack911

"When you fix something, it is implied that the feature should have existed before"

This should have been there before. Thanks for fixing it Sony.

When you fix something, it is implied that the feature should have existed before, but was somehow poorly implemented or in other ways "broken".

@laputaquelepario - I don;t think you know what you're talking about, this feature did exist before AND was poorly implemented, so it is indeed a fix.

Is it just me or are sony fanboys never satisfied. We all think that this fix is good so now the fanboys want us to re-classify the fix as an addition. The weak argument seems to be this ability didn't exist before therefore it's a new addition.

Er yea it did exist before and the original PS2 could do it so this is a fix pure and simple. Leave it at that will you!

dowingba: The 360 does upscale DVDs, you just need to use the VGA connector because of the content protection rules.

@crimson

First thing I did was test out FFXII. The jaggies are history!

"I wonder why the 360 won't upscale DVDs then?"

It does upscale DVDs over VGA. It is against the DVD Board's license to upscale over component. You won't find many DVD players that do it, either. There are a few rogue ones out there, of course.

Just ran a test on ORB. It would seem that the update has improved the graphical drivers withing the imbedded ps3 browswer as well. I was having horrible framerate issues with the playback on my PS3, but those are also gone.

"It does upscale DVDs over VGA. It is against the DVD Board's license to upscale over component. You won't find many DVD players that do it, either."

Wait so what about those 'upscaling dvd players' at my local best buy? I can't use component on them?

@ dowingba:
The 360 does upscale DVD's you just need the HD-DVD add-on and the VGA cables... sounds bad I know, but I have it and I love it!
I am, however, really pissed at microsoft for not inviting me to their halo 3 beta.... I've been a huge supporter of them to all my friends, and they turn their back on me... They really just lost a customer.

@ darkslide:
You're right, that dudes wrong... all the upscaling DVD players that I've ever seen have been component video... that aside it does have something to do with the Xbox hardware sending out an analog signal, just don't remember why :(

You're right, that dudes wrong... all the upscaling DVD players that I've ever seen have been component video...

If you have an upscaling DVD player with an HDMI port, odds are that resolutions higher than 480p are disabled on the component output. There's no particular reason for it, the content providers just applied pressure on the hardware people to do it that way. It's still possible to get an upscaling DVD player that plays HD over component through eBay.

Shit now I have no reason to steal my sisters PS2. Well time to plug that memory card adapter back up!

so anything else fixed/updated?

or just the older games looking better?

@Shin-Kaiser:

I'm confused. What feature existed before? The ability to display PS2 games in interlaced mode, or the PS3's inability to display PS2 games in progressive mode?

If it's the former, then there really was no problem with the implementation, as it was correctly displaying in interlaced mode.

If it's the latter, then it means that feature did not exist before.

If the PS3 really did support progressive mode, but did not work for certain games, then it would be a poor implementation, and therefore great that they fixed it. And yes, you'd be right. I don't know what I am talking about.

You know, I am not anti-PS3. Don't have one myself yet, but once good games roll out for it and there is a price drop I probably will.

I think the machine has tremendous potential (saw the Motor Storm trailer and was gobsmacked) and would like to see how everything pans out in the console wars (to whatever company's favor, I don't care, so long as I get the entertainment value I seek). In fact, I sincerely hope that the PS3 rocks in the physics/AI department, because I don't think graphic improvements alone are going to redefine gaming - innovation in interaction (Wii) and physics/AI can create new gameplay that cannot be done with graphics. Hopefully the cell processor lives up to the hype.

And @ penhalion:

My comment was merely an issue of semantics, not finding another excuse to bash the console. Sony PR already does a fantastic job of doing that themselves. :)

I'm not a Sony fanboy in the least sense of the word, but...

Good deal, Sony. This is the first positive thing that's happened (that I know of) in awhile.

Congrats PS3 gamers!

@laputaquelepario

Shut up!

laputaquelepario, if you check out this article everything should be made clear (no pun intended).

http://kotaku.com/gaming/ps3/clip-ps3-bc-issues-popping-up...

Basically BC games looked like crap on the PS3. Now they don't. The problem has been fixed.

@ Deth, and penhalion,
Thanks; I forgot about the 360 games themselves. SO the upscaler is needed because they don't have enough space on the dvds to put HD content..

@Photoboy
I'm not gonna lie.. I'd love to see ZOE, and especially Street Fighter 3rd strike.. and a lot of other ps2 games boosted up in 720p, however, I don't want to imply that the fact that the ps3 inferior because it doesn't upscale or rerender the ps2 games. I mean dang.. cell has 8 processors, could not one be taught to render a game into 720p?

Man that's exciting. I was a little anxious about selling my PS2 next week to get a PS3, but now I'm all for it.

Awesome!!!
-turns on PS3

It still cracks me up when people talk about getting "increased resolution" from the 360's upscaling chip. Someone please explain to me this magic process that takes a 480i source and adds extra information to make it 720p.

The only thing the scaler is doing is interpolating the 480 signal to 720, so that the TV can accept the signal in its native format. The TV has an internal scaler which does this process anyway. You basically seeing the same exact image, composed of more pixels.

@dMek

Is it upscaling? As far as I'm aware because it's emulating in software it's rendering all the graphics in 720p and applying anti-aliasing.

Even if it is upscaling, it would be upscaled from 480p as that's what the Xbox1 renders at internally. Perhaps if it is just upscaling it's the anti-aliasing that helps. Whatever it is, the image looks much sharper and cleaner on my projector with the 360 at 720p than the Xbox at 480p.

Now fix the following Sony:

- 1080i Issue
- HDCP handshake problems with Westinghouse TVs
- Add WPA2 support (Why the hell did they miss this? Wii does have WPA2 support).

ALthough it shoulda been in there from scratch, and how it was overlooked is quite frankly beyond me... its good that the fix is there now and now one of the many many stakes has been removed from the heart of sony.

It begs the question, did sony make these problems on purpose so they could "fix" them and make themselves look good? Come on, BC problems and 1080i shit is just stuff that couldn't have been overlooked like that...lol

Umm, dMek, the 360 not only upscales, but applies many filters and techniques to the video. Its not just scaled, each game is emulated and gives the xbox team the ability to apply any special shit they want.

Don't take my word for it, play SPLINTER CELL: chaos theory and check it out yourself... its VERY noticeable...

So YES there is more then just simple upscaling. Also TVs being forced to upscale = noticable lag on 90% of LCD sets.

Does this mean anything if I've got a 480i tv? Probably not, I imagine.

Meh, I'll be getting a huge HDTV once the tax money comes in, anyhow.

very nice, socom3 will look good now

Dijureno:

- HDCP handshake problems with Westinghouse TVs
Is 100% westinghouse's problem, speaking as someone who owned one of said TVs. It would sync fine on one port, only 10% of the time on the other. Same ps3 worked flawlessly on every non-westinghouse hdmi/hdcp tv I tested. How is this possibly sony's fault?
Westinghouse sucks, end of story.

- 1080i Issue
Is up to the game devs right now. Yeah, sony could probably have done a better job of supporting the devs in this regard, but do you complain to microsoft when a PC game you bought doesn't support the resolution you want? Expect most if not all future games to support 1080i.

Just tried the update myself, and confirm it fixes the problems.

The problem was before that any PS1/PS2 game would have about 40-60 weird vertical cuts/blips along vertical lines, even if outputting to 480p. Some games made this more noticible than others (FFX and MGS2/3, for example). (see http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/31/improve-ps2-game-graphic...
for some screenshot examples)