Topic: Buy a PS3 now?

Yeah, wating for a E3 price cut is a good idea. The PS3 is a great system, with more than enough great titles. It should last more than long enough till the PS4 has a price drop, maybe more. It will also allow you to play the first games of some series on PS4. The games will also be cheaper, and there will be more than enough of them. The games you will be able to walk out at GameStop for $20 or less will be amazing, a good number of the greats don't even cost $10 anymore. I would recommend starting with the earlier games you want first, that way you will be able to play older games that are great, and not have to deal that much with all the advances made in general to games over the past few years. They also have Kingdom Hearts 1.5 (KH one in HD with some extra content, Chain of Memories in HD, and it also has the cutscenes of 356/3 days in HD too, but just the cutscenes), and KH 2.5 is coming later this year I believe. It has KH2 in HD (I'm assuming it also has more content, I'm not sure though.) and I think it will have another game, I'm just not sure which.
So all in all, if you get a PS3, you will be very happy with your purchase.

I'm considering it. I'd much rather get a PS4, but there is no backwards compatibility and I missed out on a lot of PS3 games I would love to play!

Meh, give it abit then buy it. It'll be cheaper, making a missed game binge easier.

@Jaz007 Kingdom Hearts 2.5. comes with Birth by Sleep HD and (I assume) they would implement right stick camera controls for it which would be a great improvement over the PSP original

Thanks!

Nice! I played it at a friend's house two days ago. I've played about three games and loved just about each one. I can imagine I'd be more than happy having one. If the PS4 gets to the point where it has a library of games just as great, then I'd be a happy camper. ^^

Yeah, me too. If it had backwards compatibility, I would be even happier.

The worst part is that PS3(slim and super slim) and PS4 could easily run any older PS game, but Sony won't put the effort forward to make it happen. This is only if you care about playing your old games, but it's sttill a nice feature to have.

I think Sony did say PS4 would eventually run PS1 and PS2, but it still won't run PS3 games. Sony's BC is kind of a mess, but whether it matters is opinion, I guess.

The PS3 slim emulates PS1 hardware. It was PS2 compatibility that was dropped.

The major reason why the original PS3 was so bulky and had such issues with overheating was that it didn't emulate PS2. It had an actual PS2 chip set built into the thing, similar to how the Wii U houses a physical Wii. That was Sony's compromise. Smaller, cooler, and more energy-efficient PS3 with a major price drop at the cost of PS2 compatibility.

Now though, between HD repacks and the finally-growing collection of PS2 Classics on PSN, the PS3 slim should do an adequate job of scratching your PS2 itch. It's no replacement for having an actual PS2 yet, but it's not bad, especially for the price. PS2 Classics go for $10 max, and most HD repacks like Prince of Persia trilogy and SotC/Ico go for $20-30.

Still interesting to note how the Wii U succeeded where the PS3 slim failed though. It's small, cool, energy-efficient, and runs Wii games natively on the hardware.

@CaviarMeths
Oh ya, I forgot that they still ran PS1. They didn't have to have the entire chipset in there, though, which was the point I was trying to make. PS3 slim can run PS2 games, it's just not programmed to.Sony took the easy, but more expensive route by including 2 consoles in one box.

Wii U still uses the "Wii" in there as itself. They didn't put a "Wii" in there just for Wii mode, so it's pretty obvious that Nintendo went a differnet route than Sony.

If Sony would have programmed PS3 to run PS2 off of it's hardware, they wouldn't have had to put the hardware in there.

... damn. Though I would hardly claim it as a personal mantra, there is merit to having something you want now rather than postponing indefinitely. Moreover, I really don't see the two products as being equivalent so there's that. Over time the PS3 has only become more desirable, yet obviously less demanding of an economic proposition. I say go for it.

You would be better off buying the more superior PS2 for the same price as a Big Mac meal... Some of the best games ever made can be obtained for as little as a cup of coffee

PS3 yes, PS4, very unlikely. Completely different architecture would make that an extreme challenge. Maybe through emulation, but streaming is a possibility, which is in the works.

Order a happy meal and buy a PS2, then invite MAB and the Wavester over for a rockin' old school shakedown.

**Best Value**

the PS3 is hands down the worst console i've ever owned

Odd. The PS3 is possibly the best console I've ever owned.

PS2 has a pretty solid selection of games. Klonoa 2, Contra: Shattered Soldier, Silent Hill 2-4, Fatal Frame 1-3, Oden Sphere, Mega Man X7 & X8, Katomari ect ect.

Oh hey look, a bunch of games you can buy on PSN for $10 each.

@SCAR392 do you know how emulation works?..... PS2 and PS3 are notoriously difficult to emulate, even for PCs that are much more powerful than PS2 and PS4 there are no 100% reliable emulators...... Yes I would love to have BC but having an X86 console be backwards compatible with a power pc one was never going to happen..... I hope they include PSOne and PS2 emulation on PS4 which should be easy to do despite different architecture because of how much more powerful the PS4 is.... but I don't think they'll manage to get the PS4 to emulate PS3......

It's not impossible, though. Xbox 360 had Xbox BC, and they were different architecture. IIRC, only a handful of games didn't work.

EDIT: This is also why Xbox 360 BC is still in the cards, because Microsoft has already proven they know how to do BC.

I agree. And we dont really know when the price drop will happen...it could be announced at E3 or online a few months later. It really comes down to how much OP wants to play those games.

To each their own I guess. I would never say its the worst console I've owned.. its definitely Sony's worst console though imo. There are indeed a lot of games to play but its not the software monster that the PS1 and 2 were.

@MAN1AC
Kindaa. It basically rode on the back of Xbox 360. The only types of games(EDIT: that Xbox 360 didn't get)PS3 got were the imports, which Nintendo had some form of, too, like Jump Stars and such.

@ferthepoet
I just did some googling, and PS2 emulation isn't even that difficult. The answer to PS2 BC was around at least a year before PS3 released. They could have released PS3, w/o PS2 hardware, and patched in PS2 BC at a later date. No offense, but you're a fool if you think PS2 and PS3 can't be emulated on their successor systems. Metal Gear Solid 2 was on both the PS2 and PC. Or look at 3DS running Metal Gear 3D and Tales of the Abyss. There's immediate proof almost everywhere you look that PS2 and PS3 BC/emulation isn't some sort of myth.

EDIT: The fact that PS3 games are basically Xbox 360 games, is even more proof that PS3 BC is possible. Somewhere down the line, Sony either couldn't or didn't want to figure out BC, so they included the hardware in PS3, or in PS4's cae, a streaming service. They shouldn't and don't have to go through those measures to make BC work, but alas.

@SCAR392 I think you are confusing a number of different things:

True Backwards compatiblity: That's new hardware that is able to run software meant for older hardware natively: Examples are the 3DS with DS and the Wii with Game Cube

Hardware Assisted Emulation: New hardware cannot run older software natively but can do it if assisted by additional hardware: Examples are the Original PS3 with PS2 and Wii U with Wii

Software Emulation: A programme is created which allows hardware to run software not designed to run on it without requiring additional hardware: This is Nintendo's VC and Sony's PSOne and PS2 Classics line on PSN

Ports: Changes are made to the code of a specific piece of software to make it run in hardware different than that for which it was originally intended Metal Gear 3D and Tales of the Abyss are ports, they are not being emulated.

@ferthepoet
The Wii U part of the console is still using those Wii parts for itself, though, unless you're saying that the PS3 phat having PS2 parts is what allowed it to run Linux, because they were excluded simultaniously.

The point is that Sony couldn't figure out how get PS2 games running on PS3 via software emulation, or original code recognition. There is a common program for older games to run, otherwise VC wouldn't exist, and your PC wouldn't play that game from '95. VC has code that can recognize almost every piece of software from whichever console.

M4(name?), for example, created the emulators for Sega Genesis on 3DS, and the GBA emulator on Wii U. Once they have that base code for whatever level of software, it's just a metter of importing programs and possibly giving a tweak here and there. The fact that PS2 games are on PSN, means that PS3 can run PS2 discs. It's the exact same code, now the only differnce is reading it off of a disc and allowing the PS3/4 console to recognize the older code, which they obvioulsy haven't done. This is how Xbox 360(PowerPC) ran Xbox(x86) code.

It may be a bit more complicated than that, but Nintendo and Microsoft have basically already proven that Sony has no clue how to get older software running on newer hardware. I'm pretty sure everyone with a PS4 would rather play their PS3 software either by PSN or their physical copies, rather than streaming.

EDIT: Even though Nintendo basically allowed the Wii U to inheret Wii BC, and GCN BC for Wii, Microsoft has proven it's possible already, which is why they are looking into it. VC is Nintendo's BC scene. Sony has always had discs, but they still can't figure out coding from a common format, which is kind of pathetic. It would be like not being able to to put your CDs on your iPod.