PS3,PS2 emulation and more,XBOX maybe ..
HarakoMeshi Q/A
December 15, 2006 -
"Xbox was 6x as powerful as PS2 as per Itagaki.
You'd have to be an idiot to talk the way you talk about this...."
-- noname XBOT
HarakoMeshi>
That's just PR from Itagaki. He knows as well as everyone its not true.
I worked on Xbox and PS2 and I'm a specialist in emulators. Don't lecture me about power and emulation. Xbox was not more 6X more powerful than PS2. Xbox CPU is much less powerful than PS2 CPU, and it is much easier to emulate at a high level. Look at the great Xbox emulators for PC. It is very easy.
If we wanted we could make a great Xbox emulator for PS3 in just a few months work; I bet we could get more compatibility than MS could do themselves, because we have a much better team.
And look, MS requires you to download an update for every game you want to play. Why? Because the update contains a statically re-compiled, modified version of the Xbox game made to run on the 360. PS3 doesn't require any downloads. Everything is translated dynamically at runtime.
It is not only about power it is about ease of emulation. PS3 is technically 60 times faster than a PS2 but it doesn't mean its easy to emulate a PS2. Cell is by far the only commercial CPU powerful enough to emulate a PS2 completely at this time.
"You don't seem to understand that PS3 isn't really backward compatible at all in a real sense- its just a PS2 plus a PS3, the PS3 itself is not at this time bacward compatible."
-- noname XBOT
HarakoMeshi>
That's funny dumbass, because I worked on the thing you're talking about. The current PS3 emulates PS2 half in software and half in hardware, and part of my work right now is removing the hardware part completely.
"HM, why are you even talking about PS2 emulation when the PS3 has the entire PS2 hardware sitting right there on the mobo?"
-- -- noname XBOT
HarakoMeshi>
Being backwards compatible is done by any means necessary.
The PS3 is 97.5% compatible, with the assistance of some hardware. It doesn't have a PS2 soldered on, it only has a limited part of it. If there was 100% of the PS2 soldered on there would be no problem.
The situation is that we wanted to give you 100% or near 100% at all costs, so we put the hardware in as a contingency plan to guarantee that. Although even with the partial hardware assistance I can tell you it was still quite a nightmare.
Believe it or not we do care about what you get from our products, and every claim Sony's ever made was a true target. In fact, right here on my desk I have a PS3 with dual HDMI, 3 gigabit ports, etc. things that Sony developed but in the end got cut out because of price and they were not so important - but Sony could release a future SKU with those if they were important.
Backwards compatibility is not just about writing a great emulator. Sony stated that all games that respect TRCs would be compatible. In fact games are full of bugs, and a very large part of the work is fixing bugs in the games, not fixing the emulator.
In fact we do have the entire PS2 running in software on PS3 already at full speed. It is only in its final testing phases since we have to test many thousands of games... you know because if someone finds a little problem it'll be pasted on forums everywhere . Maybe I should paste some photos of my 360 refusing to play half of my games completely...
That chip that is apparently costing you something out of that $600 (more accuratly costing Sony for putting it in for your usage since Sony is selling the PS3 at heavy discount) is going to vaporize very soon.
