I say semi official because there’s still no official word on a US or Japanese release for the console, but Sony Computer entertainment of Europe has announced that the new system will be “taking the Holiday Season by storm” next week.
The good news? It’s a lot cheaper, and you’re not getting stuck with games you may not have wanted. The bad? No PS2 support. At all. Some around the news world are asking why, and I can only assume that Sony has now elminated all PS2 hardware from the PS3 design. The previous iteration of the PS3 eliminated the emotion engine from the hardware, but kept the graphics chip from the older system to assist in backwards compatibility. Removing this would make software emulation a nightmarishly difficult task, and would require two different BC methods for the less compatible systems as compared to the original PS3 design.
My question to those reading out there is, does the lack of backwards compatibility hurt this version of the system? Is the 100.00 euros off worth a lack of the ability to play older games on the system? Now the question is when the North American version will get a hard release date.
-Aegies