Harrison urges calm on PS3 BC
"The strategy is still in place."
Sony's Phil Harrison reckons "everybody just needs to calm down", telling our sister site GamesIndustry.biz that the strategy behind PlayStation 3's backwards compatibility with PS1 and PS2 is still in place.
That's despite strong reaction to news last month that the European PS3 specification would be altered to help save Sony money - the cost being a lower number of supported games from past formats.
"The strategy has not changed. We have made a technical change to the machine which moves us from being a hardware-embedded backwards compatibility solution to one which is a combination of hardware and software," Harrison told gi.biz in an interview during GDC.
"While that has unfortunately reduced the total number of games that will be compatible from the PS2 catalogue, it's important to remember that the PS1 catalogue remains unchanged, and definitely, March 23, we expect over 1000 titles to be playable for PlayStation 2. Within that list is the vast majority of games you would want to play.
"So I think everybody just needs to calm down and be comfortable that the strategy is still in place."
Sony plans to publish a backwards compatibility list on 23rd March, with additional titles set to be supported through downloads via the PlayStation Network.