Unless you bought a used PS3, you CAN'T play PS2 games on it. The models with PS2 compatibility were all discontinued in August 2008. The current models can only play PS3 and PS1 games.
Really? I was unaware of this. Not that I was planning to play PS2 games on it because of the aforementioned lack of memory card and controller slots. Makes me wonder why my PS3 has a PS2 memory utility then...
Also, PS1 compatibility, but not PS2? That's weird. Though I've heard that even on the older models, PS1 compatibility sucked anyway.
When the PS3 was being designed, Sony felt that PS2 compatibility was an important feature for the system to have. After all PS1 compatibility had been a big selling point of the PS2. Unfortunately, the developers quickly discovered that emulating the PS2 CPU on the PS3 hardware was horribly inefficient and resulted in massive slowdown on PS2 games. So the solution was to simply add the PS2 CPU into some PS3 models so that the PS2 games could run directly off that CPU. Then, when Sony's console was being massively outsold by the Wii and the 360, they were forced to cut the price of the PS3 to stay competitive. And in order to lower production costs to cover the price drop, the Emotion Engine was removed from all further PS3 models.
So why are PS1 games supported? Because the PS1 CPU was a lot less complex and is much easier to efficiently emulate.
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Also, PS1 compatibility, but not PS2? That's weird. Though I've heard that even on the older models, PS1 compatibility sucked anyway.
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When the PS3 was being designed, Sony felt that PS2 compatibility was an important feature for the system to have. After all PS1 compatibility had been a big selling point of the PS2. Unfortunately, the developers quickly discovered that emulating the PS2 CPU on the PS3 hardware was horribly inefficient and resulted in massive slowdown on PS2 games. So the solution was to simply add the PS2 CPU into some PS3 models so that the PS2 games could run directly off that CPU. Then, when Sony's console was being massively outsold by the Wii and the 360, they were forced to cut the price of the PS3 to stay competitive. And in order to lower production costs to cover the price drop, the Emotion Engine was removed from all further PS3 models.
So why are PS1 games supported? Because the PS1 CPU was a lot less complex and is much easier to efficiently emulate.
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