“WAIT!

What if….. they put the GS chip back into the slim?”

What would be the point of that emuation patent then?

We all know it’s possible, get it done.

Can’t see it happening for a while yet though.

What if….. they put the GS chip back into the slim?

Costs are down, redesign the hardware to save even more… it could now be affordable to put it back. You can flog those new people downloadable PS2 games, and you encourage people who bought PS3 fatties to trade in and buy a slimline.

They wouldn’t want to flood the market with hundreds of old games and drag people away from real PS3 stuff, they’d want to use downloadable Ico and SotC as marketing opportunities to get people interested in The Last Guardian. Yes?

But it appears to be what we already had… the CELL emulating the PS2 CPU. At least until someone cleverer than me can make sense of the patent application.

PS3 CPU emulated PS2 CPU but the PS2 GPU was still present in the system which gave it partial backwards compatibility, first PS3′s had a full PS2 built into the system. This is just a patent covering the CPU emulation.

The bigger problem is the PS2 graphic synthesizer [GS] it does not map well to conventional modern GPU’s and is a bit of an odd duck compared to the GeForce 7 GPU in the PS3.

Anyone who has used PCSX2 (PC PS2 emulator) knows that a general purpose emulator is very difficult if impossible to make, it really has to be done on a per title basis.

So unless Sony is planning remakes like Ratchet & Clank HD, Sly Cooper HD ,God of War HD etc that sell as digital downloads its very unlikely.

Phoenixblight the xbox and xbox 360 although different hardware from different companies are still closer architecturally than the PS2 compared to the PS3 this allowed MS to port over its Xbox games without too much difficulty.

Especially with the size of the library, you’d never get through it.

I hope they come up with an alternative for those idiots who don’t have BC PS3′s. And if mine ever blows up, which will probably happen, becuase I am a pessimist, and I don’t want to jinx it by being optimistic.

While I still think stripping BC from the PS3 was a kick in the teeth to consumers, after Sony executives shouting through the roof about it when it was announced, reinstating it through an efficient, all-software solution certainly makes sense, even if they plan to offer PS2 games as downloads (testing the waters for a future console with no optical drive, a-la PSP Go).

Listening to the 1up podcast was verrrrrry interesting around that time!

I’m sure it is possible to get a software-only GS emulator running, Robo. I guess the trick is getting it running at sufficient speed. If that’s the case, tailoring it to specific games would be much easier than trying to come up with a ‘one size fits all’ solution.

It was all entirely software emulation wasn’t it? It was the HDD that had all the software emulation.

I thought the main reason it was difficult was not because of the GS but because the PS3 doesn’t have a EDRAM chip that could be used like the DRAM chip on the PS2.

You can find the original comments at: http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?showtopic=144575&view=findpost&p=6201540

I love reading developers thoughts though

Edit: Oh I guess you answered my question, I didn’t read your post properly. The software emulation was EE only, and they still had the graphics chip onboard?

Unless they can come up for a solution for that, PS2 emulation’s probably going nowhere fast.

That said… they must be kicking themselves that FFVII can sell 100,000 copies and they can’t flog you FFX. I’d be amazed if they weren’t trying to come up with a solution for individual titles.