The Games News

Thousands of games, tens of thousands of competitive man-hours, and over a decade later, Sony has decided to cut the cord on the production of the PSone. Sony announced that the PlayStation 2 will now become the standard entry-level system, with both it and the PlayStation 3 being backwards compatible for PSone games. With their well-recognized and mysteriously ambiguous launch ads, such as the “Enos Lives” (meaning “Ready Ninth of September”) ad, the PlayStation began its successful career on September 9, 1995 at a price of $299. Having sold over 100 million units across the world, the PSone kept gamers on their toes with such titles as Final Fantasy VII, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Tekken, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid, and many more. Since placing the PSone on the chopping block, Sony has also announced that it is currently developing an emulator that will allow owners of the PlayStation Portable to download PSone games and play them on their handheld device. No release date for the emulator or any other details have been made public so far.

While the functionality opens the door for new gaming experiences, some things still remain the same. Sony ruined the new controller for PlayStation 3 with handles and geometric symbols. 6-way sensitivity on top of traditional game pad movement is nowhere near a copy of full sensitivity with analog commands added on. The controller has very limited capacity in this sense, also, there are limited applications to how they implemented motion sensing, meaning very few games will use it. The PlayStation 1 controller was just a SNES controller with two additional buttons and the second version of the PlayStation 1 controller was just the same with an additional 3D stick, like the one on the Nintendo 64 controller. For the new PlayStation 3 controller things are not positive. So many tiny buttons will be uncomfortable to hold, and the gamers will be certainly disappointed. They should make a new controller with unique new features necessary to push the gaming experience to another superior level.

According a rumour the new PlayStation 3 game console will include the combined Emotion Engine and Graphic Synthesizer chip designed and used for PlayStation 2. Hardware emulation ensures that every single PlayStation 2 game will also run on the new PlayStation 3. The inclusion of PlayStation 2 hardware within the PlayStation 3 would seem to guarantee 100% backwards compatibility from day one. But only few components are common, and PlayStation 3 seems an extremely powerful game console compared with all the others. Due to later hardware revisions, some backwards compatibility issues appeared with original PlayStation software, but PlayStation 3 will be able to connect at Sony’s online infrastructure in order to download any necessary updates to ensure that original games will remain playable. Constant patching will assure full backwards compatibility.

The software emulation rumored to be used for backwards compatibility on PlayStation 3 is the same trick used by Microsoft on Xbox 360 to play original Xbox titles. Sony must get the majority of its back catalogue compatible with the new PlayStation or they will lose an important advantage. Yet a surprising number of PlayStation 2 titles are already working on PlayStation 3 prototype hardware. This is because some components from PlayStation 2 are used on the PlayStation 3. The gaming console will be compatible with virtually every TRC compliant PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 title. PlayStation 3 will have a combination hardware and software emulation solution - unlike the retarded last minute hack Microsoft was forced to throw into the Xbox 360.

Generally the first instinct for millions of people worldwide is to turn on electronic games when they want to be entertained. Entertainment is nowadays a fast growing industry with millions of subscribers from different countries. Now TV is no longer the main attraction and a good game can be more captivating than any TV network. The good games are involving interactivity, strategy, thinking, and in many of them a basic story line is followed. The games are not just for young boys but also for girls, and their main advantage is the interactivity. The quality of TV is going down too much and in those conditions 2 in 5 in 10 adults turn their attention to electronic games. Video games are the highest form of art mankind ever has made, because they combine everything: music, art and feelings are melted together and the best part is that you are actually in the game. Movies, no matter how good they get, are not interactive. In video games you actually are in the story instead of just watching it, and people are starting to finally realize the advantages of that.