PS2 Emulation on PS3?

At the Games Convention in Leipzig, Sony revealed that SingStar for the PlayStation 3 would be able to load songs from the PlayStation 2 version of the game.

Sony's official PlayStation blog put it as the PS3 game's engine being able to do the song loading: "We added to the PS3 SingStar game 'engine' the ability to read and decode the tracks from a SingStar disc for PS2". Which sounds like software emulation to us.

Today, a quote from David Reeves of Sony has PS3 owners buzzing with excitement. Reeves, while talking to a German website was talking in reference to the PS2-PS3 Singstar handshake and suggested that the emulation that is required to get a PS2 game onto a PS3 might be duplicated in the case of other PS2 titles as well : "We're monitoring for which titles this would be worthwhile, and may make more PS2 games run on PS3 via emulation in the future."

PS2 backward compatibility through PS3 hardware is no longer a feature of current and future PlayStation 3 models. Gamers hope that a future firmware upgrade will enable a PS2 emulation through software. Although it is not clear whether the PS3 has the hardware muscle to pull off such a feat -- the PS2 was an esoteric beast, to say the least.

Reeves quote might very well have been a mistranslation but we hope that Sony hasn't abandoned PS2 compatibility and that they at least adopt a policy similar to what Microsoft has done with its 'backward compatibility' -- a case by case emulation of old titles on new hardware.

Source: Techtree.com

Related articles
Xbox 360 beats PlayStation 3 in Japan
Fight Night: Impressions
Video games develops mental, surgical dexterity