Video Games

Sony this week acknowledged that when it starts selling the PS3 in Europe on March 23, the consoles will no longer include dedicated hardware designed to let gamers play PS2 games on their new consoles.

Instead, a software program will be installed on the PS3 so that the console's processor can emulate the hardware in the PS2 and run the old games.

Software is cheaper to produce than hardware, so the change will save Sony money on each PS3 it sells. However, software emulation is not as effective as dedicated hardware.

So European PS3 owners initially will be able to play only a handful of PS2 games on their new systems, unlike American and Japanese PS3 owners, who can basically play any PS2 game. Sony presumably will be releasing downloadable software updates to European PS3 consoles over time, to enable more PS2 games on the PS3. At least that's how Microsoft handled making Xbox games compatible with the Xbox 360. But Sony sounds as if it doesn't want to bother with the updates.

"Rather than concentrate on PS2 backwards compatibility, in the future, company resources will be increasingly focused on developing new games and entertainment features exclusively for PS3," Sony said in a prepared statement.

Comically self-righteous gamer rage exploded almost instantly across the Internet on Thursday and Friday as the news broke.

What's more, if this change is saving Sony some coin, it seems inevitable that Sony will alter the configuration of all new PS3 consoles sold around the world and not limit the change to Europe.

So, if you want guaranteed backward compatibility in your PS3, you should probably go buy one now. But honestly, who cares?

Yes, it's nice being able to play all your games on a single system. But once most gamers buy a next-gen console, I doubt that many of them spend much time replaying previous-gen games.

Microsoft got a lot of grief for the clumsy way it handled backward-compatibility updates on the 360. But other than the occasional round of Halo or Halo 2, I never play old Xbox games on my 360. Even the seminal Halo titles look bland and plain when I can battle through modern eye candy such as Gears of War or Prey .

Sony should have just ditched backward compatibility when it was designing the PS3. It's not as if backward compatibility is a time-honored tradition in the console world.

Gamers never complained that the N64 couldn't play Super Nintendo games, for example, and it's really only when Sony made PS1 games playable on the PS2 that the technology came into vogue.

Gamers can live without it.