Will the PS3 be backwards compatible?

[Angel Tarragon]

I am thinking of getting a PS3 but I want to know if it will player older PS games (from the 1 & 2). Does anyone know?

 

[John Crichton]

Yes and yes.

 

[trancejeremy]

Yes, but you need to buy an adapter to use the old memory cards (if you want to use your old saves, anyway). And you will need an adaptor if you have any special controllers.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

So, I guess then that PS3 memory cards will be able to store saves from older platform games. Is that right?

 

[trancejeremy]

It just saves them to the hard drive, not a memory card. I don't think there are PS3 memory cards - I think it can use external devices though if you want to copy saves to another PS3 (like a memory stick), but I'm not 100% sure on that.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Thanks for the Info, TranceJ!

 

[Rackhir]

The original PS2 was backwards compatible because it basically had a PS1 on a chip inside of it. With regards to the PS3, I have been hearing different things so take this with a grain of salt. Originally it was going to be using software emulation, but they were having problems with that and decided to go hardware, but that's going to bump up the parts count and generate heat, blah, blah, blah....

PS3 Compatability
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/07/10/sony_ps3_compatibilty_claim/

The Register article search on the PS3
http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=ps3&page=3&sort=date&results_per_page=10&site=

 

[Arnwyn]

The details are unimportant.

As John Crichton says: yes and yes.

And, better yet, as trancejeremy says, the PS3 will even save all PS1 and PS2 games on the HD (instead of having to buy/use old PS1/PS2 memory cards). Sony is even releasing a cheap little adapter to transfer your old PS1/PS2 saves onto the PS3 HD.