Sony drops a deuce on Europe

With the soon to be released PAL localization of Sony's next-gen (or is it now just current gen?) system, news has flooded the tubes of the interweb about its newly installed deficiencies.

Yes... that's right... it has gotten worse.

"David Reeves (SCEE CEO) had these comments to say about the upcoming release of the console:
The backwards compatibility is not going to be as good as the U.S. and Japan models."

"Software will take over some of the functionality that was originally taken care of by dedicated chips, which means far fewer PlayStation 2 (PS2) games can be played on a European PS3 compared with the Japanese and American PS3 models which play 98 percent of old games."

"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."

While the validity of these appalling statements could seem to be in question, they are in fact true. Thanks to a follow-up statement by Sony.

The European PS3 will feature the Cell Broadband Engine™, 60 GB hard disc drive, Blu-ray Disc player, built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, SIXAXIS™ wireless controller. It also embodies a new combination of hardware and software emulation which will enable PS3 to be compatible with a broad range of original PlayStation® (PS) titles and a limited range of PlayStation®2 (PS2) titles.

How does a console get arbitrarily worse when flying to Europe from Japan? Did someone spill mayo in the disc drives on the plane? Perhaps instead of controllers all of the consoles shipped to Europe accidentally had Snickers with wires stuck in them?

I just don't get how Sony could seriously believe taking a dump on Europe is good for business. Last time I checked there were very few playable (see: not flaming piles of poo) titles for the PS3. In fairness that was also true after the release of the PS2, and man I love that system now. But at the time, when my PS2 was effectively worthless it still loaded up Final Fantasy Tactics, which made all my troubles go away. Now the European PS3 can't even manage the fairly simplistic task of running Final Fantasy 12, or any number of the amazing PS2 titles to hit shelves within the last year.

The PS2 isn't dead yet, in turn a next gen system should support its predecessors to further increase their longevity, and in no circumstance should a system be effectively broken in one SKU and not another.

\\drew