The PS3 units sold in Japan and the US since November ’06 until present have reportedly included the PS2’s chipset to provide near 100% backward compatibility (a few rendering issues needed firmware updates but were fixed). When the PS3 launches in Europe in March, according to news articles this week, the PS3 will not include the PS2’s hardware but will instead emulate the PS2 in software. This is a smart move for Sony as a first step in reducing manufacturing costs, but of course people are worried that this means backwards compatibility will have less that 100% support compared with the original Japan and US consoles.
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