PlayStation 3 could feature downloadable PSone, PS2 games

Should be 47 not 48.

It sounds like a good idea but is it really?

For starters, the back catalogue. Sony has many exclusives but for this service to be a success, many 3rd party companies must be involved. Its not so easy as taking a game and throw it as downloadable content.

It smells copycat! The virtual console has been envisioned by Nintendo and it's implementation is a strategic and well thought function of revolution. You cannot simply take it and add it in your leisure.

The other caveat, is the games themselves. They are many mib long. The download time will be significant, and the space more than so. And it kinda defeats the purpose of having a big expensive noisy machine to play 32bte games.

Sony as a company now is so complicated and labyrinthine that I find their products too complicated to navigate. I'm confused by their proprietry software and their ever changing formats. I can't imagine their hastily put together online experience will be a pleasure to use either. I hope to be wrong though.

The games for PS1 and PS2 are way too big, unless PS3 comes with a huge hardrive which will up the cost. I'd rather play the old games on a disk than wait for gigabytes to download. It will totally suck for people with slow internet connections.

"Wow, looks like the PS3 is going to have everything from it's "rival" consoles... Oh except a TV remote but i already have 6 of those. So i guess there is no reason to buy anything else.

Best Graphics......................Check
Best Processor.................... Check
Best 3rd Parties...................Check
Biggest Selection of 3rd Parites...Check
Online Network.....................Check
Downloadable Content...............Check
High Definition Player.............Check
High Defintion Games...............Check
Downloadable Games.................Check

Washes the Dishes, Well...not quite...maybe PS4 will

It's absolutely amazing that Sony has the Best feature for feature set in the next console race. If they pull all of this off by next Christmas, it will be the most feature rich, enjoyable, customer satisfied and game driven console ever. PERIOD."


...and it will probably cost about 500.00 - 800.00! I'LL BUY THAT NOW! *rolls eyes*

#50 how is it copycat?

Sony announced Digitial distribution of games and movies before the PS2 hit. They just didnt implement it yet unfortunately. And Nintendo has yet to implement it as well since the Rev isnt out yet.

The only one that has doneit so far, and due to their success and nice structure of Live is Microsoft.

My goodness, every time Nintendo says or does something regardless of it copying or not, they are alwasy touted as the originators, so funny.

Nintendo fanboys, please take a moment to consider the implications of this potential news before you bash mercilessly. At the moment, Sony has a very good relationship with a great deal of third-party developers. Nintendo's getting better, but they aren't there yet. If Sony can convince, say, Square-Enix to license FFVII for distribution over a streaming download service (because you can be damned sure they'll try), that could break the proverbial ice for Squenix to license their old properties out for download over the Revolution's download service.

Chrono Trigger, anyone? Super Mario RPG, perhaps? Because without Squenix's consent, you sure as hell won't be seeing them on there otherwise. The same goes for any current big-name developer with a history on Nintendo's consoles. The more the merrier, people. Cry foul all you wish, but online distribution is the future (however distant that may be).

It's ironic to hear all the Nintendo fans complaining because they believe Sony "copied" Nintendo, when in fact the people behind the much-maligned Phantom were talking about digital distribution a couple of years ago--in fact, it was even central to their strategy. Yet, I don't recall anyone here questioning Nintendo's motives, or claiming that they stole that idea from the Phantom.

You could also look at the X-Box 360, which has a few classic games available for download RIGHT NOW. I seem to remember several Nintendo fans here getting hot under the collar about the "classics" being offered, too.

I also seem to remember that there were downloadable Genesis and Commodore 64 games offered for the (now defunct) Tapwave Zodiac handheld a couple of years ago.

Go back a few more years, and you might recall The Sega Channel, which offered downloadable games for the Genesis.

Finally, if you really want to dig way, WAY back...you might want to read this:

http://www.atarimagazines.com/v2n4/dialagame.html

It's an article from the July 1983 issue of Antic magazine, describing the GameLine modem for the Atari 2600. Yes, this is a real product, which was released to market (by a tiny upstart company that grew over the years and ultimately became America Online). Downloadable games on a home video game console were available here--in the United States--back in 1983.

That settles this argument once and for all. Nintendo was nowhere near being the first company to talk about the idea of offering downloadable games, and they surely won't be the last either.

While it's a nice option to have, it's a bit more bandwidth-demanding than Nintendo's solution. Sony's games are, with very few exceptions (Vib Ribbon), pretty danged big compared to Nintendo's pre-Cube, cartridge-based games which barely exceed the size of one MP3. And downloading PS2 games in a quick and handy manner? Puh-lease. That's a hell of a lot of data they have to shift about.

If they can manage to make it work for the regular, non-insanelymassivebroadband user, then they should be applauded. For now, though, if downloading PS1 and PS2 games is what Sony has in mind for this, I think MS and Nintendo are more on the right track: Keeping things small, manageable, and quick to download and play.

Are the above few commentors actually stupid?

Just think for a minuite - when nintendo revealed the download service, no one jumped up and said what an old idea it was, and how sony would doubtlessly feature it also, cos they'd be mad not to, it being such a great idea. In fact, it was laughed at by a good many sony fanboys on this very site!

Now that a few old timers at sony have gone "hmmm, perhaps we should do that...", and we nintendo fanboys, quite rightly, are simultaniously outraged at the desperate copycatism of this, and amused at just how terribly pathetic every news story we see about ps3 is these days, you wallys pipe up like it was sonys plan all along, and that they, in fact, are some kind of innovator?

Even the most die hard sony fanboy has to admit that sony, as a company, are hardly an idea's factory. How many times does it have to be said? SONY MAKE CHEAP ELECTRONICS! NINTENDO MAKE GAMES. Sweet, beautiful, original, fun games. Ahhh.

Get a ds, get a rev, see what fun is like and shut your greasy, yellow toothed pie holes.

"1. Nintendo's wifi service has been up and has been more successful than microsoft's, it's service has accrued registered users at 4 times the rate of the live service. And it's free. It will probably follow suit for the revolution that it mirrors the DS in lack of cost. That alone will put it into prime position for the best online service for a great many gamers. "

Uh... you sure that's crack you smokin? Or Drano? Sight your sources pal. Xbox had 2 million subscribers in July of 2005. Nintendo had 1 million on Febuary 13th of 2006. Please stop making things up.

THAT IS IT!!!!!!! I've HAD it with Sony! They can't make their own ideas, so they take them from their competitors. C'MON SONY!!! You expect me to believe that one of the biggest names in electronics has to take ideas from a "dying" company? That is why I despise Sony, they can't think for themselves, they're like CHILDREN!!!

And all you sony "fanboys" out there, why the hell do you support these people? Trust me, if they have to take an idea from an old rival (that wants nothing to do with this console war) they have lost their touch and you know that!

I can't believe anyone can still support Sony. If anyone out there reads this and thinks i'm a nintendo "fanboy", i'm not. I'm trying to protect the rights of an innocent company. If anyone out there still supports this goddamned company, GO TO HELL WITH YOUR BELOVED SONY!!!!!

"59. "1. Nintendo's wifi service has been up and has been more successful than microsoft's, it's service has accrued registered users at 4 times the rate of the live service. And it's free. It will probably follow suit for the revolution that it mirrors the DS in lack of cost. That alone will put it into prime position for the best online service for a great many gamers. "

Uh... you sure that's crack you smokin? Or Drano? Sight your sources pal. Xbox had 2 million subscribers in July of 2005. Nintendo had 1 million on Febuary 13th of 2006. Please stop making things up."

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/nintendo/niwifi-hits-one-million-158966.php


"Nintendo just announced that their WiFi service has logged their millionth player. That’s one million unique users in less than four months.

While it blows away the 20 months it took the Xbox to hit a million gamers, it’s important to keep in mind that NiWiFi is free while Xbox Live is a paid subscription."

Yeah, he was wrong, membership growth was 5+ times, not 4 times, faster for the wifi service as opposed to the xbox live service.

Looks like uglypimp just got bitchslapped >:)

GamesIndustry.biz reports that Sony is considering a digital distribution service that would bring popular PSone and PS2 titles to the PS3

um, this may not even happen. Key word Considering.
Sony would not be able to pull this off. I wonder how long it takes to download FFX thank about it.

At first I was really mad when I heard about this...

...then I realized that this added feature would make the console more expensive.

Congrats Sony, stealing ideas does no harm if no one can afford your system in the first place!

Nintendo had downloadable content in the NES era with the NES Satellite in Japan, long before Sony came on the scene. Mind you, it was in the form of kiosks and blank ROMs but you were able to download games to those ROMs for play on your NES. How the hell did Enigma get a star for that comment when he's dead wrong?

The stars displayed aren't the rating of each comment, strider, they're the accumulated total of all the stars the commenter has accrued to date.

To add to what striderhayasa said Nintendo also released the Satellaview for the snes which allowed you to download demos at home thru a modem. The services was free but only available at specific hours though. So you can say Nintendo has been tossing around the idea of downloadable content for a while.

Ok ok... fine... to make everybody happy... THE ONLY COMPANY TO HAVE ANY CHECKS WOULD BE MICRSOFT. THEY WIN HANDS DOWN.

Nintendo Rev & PS3=Not released; therefore is apprently loses all grounds to compare & argue on any accounts what-so-ever. I guess close down all threads unless it's already released. MY BAD.

here an interesting thought...

what if sony allowed you to download isos on your own, via bittorrent or whatever you choose, and then charge you a slight fee to give you the ability to run it on the ps3? THATS how they could kill piracy [ok, maybe just dwarf it].

who would risk modding their ps3 and paying for an expensive [at least early on...] modchip, when you could legally use an otherwise illegal iso copy of an older game on the system for a fraction of the cost of buying it used?

yes, that would hurt the used market, but devs and manufacturers dont get any profit from the aftermarket anyways and it could potentially put money back into the developers pockets, which was something that was a hot topic a few months ago.

it would save sony the bandwidth. plus everyone knows its only a matter of time before someone releases an iso loader for any console that has a harddrive anyways, why not beat the hackers to the punch? they could make it require online verification ala DNAS or something.

this may be a million dollar idea on the level of ipod/ itunes or something, yet im giving it away free, because i want to see it happen.

Digital distribution? Sony? What about the high capacity of Blu-Ray they've been touting? Doesn't this sorta negate using disc media?

Enigma wtf are you talking about the n64 had the internet (RadNet) in japan and a web-browser & email support well before sony or microsoft and lets not forget that the snes had a satalite servise well before the playstation came out. i whould also like to see sony get arround nintendo's virtual console patent.

Funny how immature teenagers can fight over something as petty as what big corporation borrowed an idea from another corporation. *Sigh* I guess it's because everyone is so "anti-establishment" that they must support company A over company B...

But this honestly has me excited if it is true. It means I get to play Castlevania: SOTN and the Naughty Dog Crash Bandicoot games all over again. Sony has quite the back catalog, it just doesn't have the individuals willing to become martyrs for it.

Apoc06 I am happy to see another PSP user that loves his PSP. I read all these negative reviews of the games, and the machine and wonder why. I use mine for podcasting, watching DVDs. And I have at quite a few games that I thoroughly enjoy playing GTA:LCS, Tiger Woods Gold 06 (I will concede that 05 sucked), Untold Legends, World Series of Poker, SOCOM, Lummies. All of which I think are great games. I also own a DS but have found only a few games that I really enjoy on that. I honestly believe that the DS games are aimed more teens and light hearted fun games while the PSP games are aimed more at the Action Adventure and adult games.

#43: You have got to be kidding me if you are comparing Nintendo’s WiFi service to Xbox Live. Where to begin. You have to come up a complex sequence of numbers that you then send to a friend to get them added to your friends list, so the user interface is like comparing a bow and arrow to a modern day sniper rifle. There are currently no games that support voice chat, I will wait and see how it actually works with Metroid Prime Hunters. Basically it hooks up two or more IP addresses and lets you play against each other. Currently there are three games that support WiFi, with three more coming this month and Mario Kart is the horse that is pulling that WiFi wagon right now, that little plumber has sure keep Nintendo alive for over 20 years . According to Nintendo’s website they just clicked over a million users for a console that has been out for over a year. Your right it is free so that is kind of cool.

But I must say I am glad that all this should be put to rest as of Wednesday. Does anyone know what time that will be?

Enigma, The Super Famicom and N64 were online with downloadable content in Japan. Thanks.

I very rarely post on here but feel the need to say I think all this Sony hating is getting out of hand. Many people are gonna be jumping through hoops with joy as soon as Sony release the PS3 no matter how long it takes. I'll bet many of you "haters" on here will be too.

I own an Xbox360 a PS2 and a PSP and enjoy all systems in different ways. I am looking forward to PS3 with positive attitude, I've got better things to do than piss and moan at Sony for not releasing any details thus far. Does it matter? Is it life threatening if they end up delaying the release? One things for sure Sony are getting your attention, and alot of you react to Sony like I would react to my missus in an argument. She plays the silent trick as well and I ALWAYS bite, but she is the love of my life even though I get angry with her. Its weird, do you haters in actual fact really love Sony deep down?

The most annoying, is what seems to be a mass of sad Nintendo fanboys trolling any post with the title "PS3" or "PSP" in it full of negativity and praising anything with the word "Nintendo" in it. Its very insecure behaviour.

Whenever I read alot of the "news" on here about PS3 I get quite excited about the possibilites just the same as when I read "news" on Revolution... but its all speculation until they are released. What will you all do if Nintendo suddenly announce a delay in launch? You'll say "Oh thats ok, they are trying to make sure its good quality before release" If sony do it because they want the Blu Ray drive and/or the Cell to be perfect before release you all say "Sony Junk!!" PISS MOAN WANK!

Why cant people have a friendly debate centered around the topic? Talk about what the possibilites could be, and wishes for the idea of downloadable games what you'd like to see? Instead I read post upon post saying the same old crap no matter what the heading is.

One thing that makes me laugh is how people here seem to accept stuff like Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3. "Yeah Great Idea Nintendo!! releasing a 20 year old game for NES on GBA and selling it for $30.. " If Sony had released Wipeout Pure as "Wipeout Special: Wipeout" which was just wipeout 1 on PSone THEN went on to release "Wipeout Special: Wipeout 2097" etc etc people would PUKE with anger!!! And don't say "But Mario is a classic so deserves to be re-released like that" Pure fact is Nintendo MILKED the whole SMB advance line. They could have made original titles or even at LEAST in some order! like SMB3 as the FIRST release... but didnt. They got to number 4 and thought, "Jeeezuz we never thought people would accept this shovelwear to a 4th version, we've ran out of SNES Mario games... lets REALLY take the piss and release a NES SMB game!!" And you all swallow it.

Not all PS1 games are "sequels" that you can play now. Some games I remember playing on PS1 that I'd like to try again are:-

Jumping Flash
N-Gen Racing
Einhander
Vib Ribbon
Parappa the Rappa
Tempest X3
N2O
Rollcage
Philosoma
Assault Rigs

Those spring to mind first. Can you play "Sequels" to any of those on PS2?? Anyone else care to mention any they'd like to see?

I think the idea of having back catalogue games on any system for download is great! I for one didn't buy alot of classic PS1 games that i'd like to try. and just because Nintendo released info on this first doesnt mean that Sony hadn't already thought about it. It makes sense. I for one hope Sega decide to release classics on ALL systems in the same fashion.

Right now I'm enjoying Live Arcade on Xbox360 (Geometry Wars is amazing), Shadow of the Colossus on PS2 (Quite possibly the best game i've ever played) and GTA on PSP. And looking forward to, but not obssessing about, the PS3 and Revolution.

The year is 1989. Nintendo releases the Famicom Modem, with the ability to use your Famicom for Online Banking, to play games on line, and to look up hints and information on games, also with limited downloadable content (although I don't believe they had any downloadable games until they released the X-Band for the Super Famicom several years later). This was coupled with the Famicom Disk System, an add on for the Famicom which used Disks instead of Cartridges (because disks were cheaper, it was never released in the US because the disks lacked sufficient copy protection and the games were easy to pirate).

This is just so you know that neither Sony or Microsoft were the first to think digital distribution, game companies have been vaguely heading in that direction for decades. Microsoft and Sony are just now catching up.

And before anyone jumps on this, Nintendo was not the first console maker to offer online play. I believe that was the Commodore 64, but I'm not 100% certain.

Okay, I declare Agent X wins this thread. I never even heard of the GameLine.

But my previous point holds valid, digital distribution has been where we've been heading for decades, it just hasn't really been viable until recently (for the most part still isn't quite there yet).

No more comments are necessary here.

what would like to see is how they plan on getting permission from all these companies, because lets face it, sony doesn't have many first party titles, and like that other dude said, if the system is backwards compatible, whats the sence in having that function at all? the rev has i because it shifted from carts to disk once the 64 era was over(thank goodness for that desicion).and to add more to that, theres no way its gonna be free and by being on cd/dvd the disk space, you can expect $20 to 40 dollar downloads especially when it comes to downloading games like god of war, i'm sorry but i think theres too much red tape for this one. sony is just trying steal nintendo's fire because they too lazy to start there own. and if what recent news indicates sony should know by now that stealing ideas has major reprocusions, just ask immerson.

That people are calling this a rip-off of a Nintendo feature that is part of a product that still lacks a launch date is either deep ignorance or neurotic partisanship. Downloadable content has been a goal since people first began using modems with small computers back in 70s. Shareware games have been sold online since the 80s. The advent of broadband only narrows the gap between what is convenient to download and what demands the capacity of manufactured disc(s). Console makers have experimented with varying approaches to this but the Xbox Live Arcade on the original Xbox and now the Marketplace on the 360 have set a standard. Sony and Nintendo can talk about but Microsoft has been doing it for over two years.

Addressing some of the previous comments:

Several people suggested it was ridiculous to purchase PS1 and PS2 games you already or can obtain used. This differs from online sales of games from past Nintendo platforms in what way? If it's a good idea for Nintendo it is certainly also a good idea for Sony. The day is rapidly approaching when it will seem odd for a platform not to support online sales as a distibution method. Who did it first will only matter in the short term. Within a decade that will merely be the answer to a trivia question.

It should be remembered that in spite of Sony's dominance for two generation there remains plenty of probable PS3 buyers who never owned either previous Sony platform just as many PS2 owners were not PS1 owners but bought plenty of PS1 games, or don't wish to clutter their home with multiple machines, or are more inclined to try out the best of the PS1/PS2 if it can be done cheaply from their couch rather than searching through a stack at EB that were ill treated by the previous owners. As well, the used games that are hard to find or command high prices due to their rarity need not command a premium when downloaded. Best of all from the publishers' perspective, they can make money on downloaded games vs. receiving nada for the resale of used games.

It also opens things up for different business models. Selling games individually is just one approach. It can just as easily be an all you can play subscription service. Episodic releases become another venue that allows a publisher to start collecting revenue before all of the chapters are available. An important consideration as development costs continue to grow along with the capabilities of the platforms.

Nor are the games too large for effective downloading. Many games for the PS1&2 are quite small and don't come close to consuming an entire CD. In fact, many PS2 titles are small enough that they use CD instead of DVD just to save a few pennies. But even for those games spanning multiple CDs there are ways to make things far more efficient than they could be on the original hardware.

Consider how these games will likely be run on the PS3. Since the PS3 is radically different architecture than its predecessors and Sony has made no mention of any onboard silicon to enable backward compatibility. So, like the Xbox 360, the PS3 will probably rely on a combination of realtime and pretranslated binary emulation. This opens up some opportunities to insert some PS3 native code in the place of certain common portions of code responsible for soundtrack and video sequences.

The bulk of the typical console game is masses of Red Book audio files and FMV files. The actual game code and graphics/audio data is at most a few dozen megabytes. Very reasonable for downloading and beginning play within a reasonable amount of time. Except the opening FMV the problem of downloading additional FMV and Red book files can be alleviated by anticipating what will be needed next and downloading it in the background while game is played. (This assumes there is a suitable amount of processing capacity left over after the emulator runs. Not unreasonable in my estimation if the PS3 even half lives up to its specs.) This means the emulator would need some addition smarts to parse a file included with the download that instructs it per which file will be needed next and have them ready when the game requires them.

As for the size of these audio and FMV files, we can do a lot about those as well. Red Book audio is plain old CD audio. The equivalent of a WAV file rather than the far smaller file achieved when compressed for MP3 or more current codec. What consumed 100 megabytes on a PS1 CD could be reduced to a small fraction of that size with no loss in quality. The trick is to identify those sections of code that perform a audio file playback and trap them so as to redirect the operation to a codec to properly playback the compressed version of the original file. Doing the same for FMV is more difficult since there are many custome codecs used across the PS1/PS2 library but a fairly small number account for a big portion of them, especially those provided by Sony and major middleware companies. Also, it would be necessary to gain access to the original video files to avoid reproducing the horrible M-JPEG look of the PS1 era. Using MPEG-4 or similar modern codec the quality can be far, far higher while using a far smaller file or thinner stream.

This process may seem daunting but much of the work can be automated with good tools. Obviously, this means a certain amount of investment per game and so can only be justified for a subset of the total PS1/PS2 library but that still amounts to hundreds of games out of thousands. Much as many games of yore have required investment to reap new revenue on the GBA. Some games have no life beyond their era and platform while other go on forever with just a bit of improvement here and there.

Justchris,

Xband was not a Nintendo product. It was a third party (Catapult) for both SNES and Genesis to enable multiple player online for game normally requiring both players on the same console. Nor did it offer downloadable game content, just text items such as email and newspaper articles.

Nor did online play originate on the Commodore 64. (not a console BTW) There were people playing online back in the 70s when their means of access was terminals connected to mainframes and minis connecting to text based games running on distant systems.

It is also untrue that piracy concerns were the primary reason for not releasing the Famicom floppy disk add-on and Twin Fami with built-in disk drive in the US. The simple fact is that it wasn't very well liked in the Japanese market. When sales slumped after only four million units were sold Nintendo decided it was a failure. Most of this played out before the US market became important to Nintendo. Part of the problem was that consumers perceived the cost of entry as being unacceptably high with no notable improvement to the games nor lower prices despite the lower cost for Nintendo, and the failure rate of the floppies was dismaying to an audience that didn't know how to properly handle them and keep them away from magnetic fields. The 3" disk form factor used was pretty obscure and didn't make priacy nearly as simple as the ubiquitous 5.25" disks.

Geoff, you have it backwards. It isn't a matter of Sony having to go begging for third party support. The games were created to be sold and make money for their publisher. The prospect of being able to make new revenue from old products is very exciting to them. Especially when they don't have to make any advance royalty payments on the production of discs that may or may not sell. Instead simply collecting a payment from Sony for each download is pretty hard to beat. The participants have nothing to lose and much to gain.

"Even the most die hard sony fanboy has to admit that sony, as a company, are hardly an idea's factory. How many times does it have to be said? SONY MAKE CHEAP ELECTRONICS! NINTENDO MAKE GAMES. Sweet, beautiful, original, fun games. Ahhh."

More fangirl ramblings about Nintendo's revolutionary innovation dribble. Nintendo never did anything out of the box from nes to snes, hell they would not even go with the better storage medium due to greed & stupidity. They are only now trying to think outside the square, cause it's the only fighting chance they have to get that old nintendo name back.
They don't make games any better than some of the 3rd parties that switched to sony's & MS's console. Developers like ex-rare (goldeneye) makers free Radical Design, Naughty Dog, Namco, Criterion, Bungie, Square, CAPCOM, Insomniac, & some of sony's 1st party teams, etc,etc.

Only a foolish nintendo fangirl would have us believe otherwise. Sony have one of the best back catologue's for d/loadable games considering their relative short time in the biz. A few that spring to mind are Medievil, Twisted Metal, Ico, Shadow of The collossus, Wipeout, Jak & daxter, Syphon Filter, etc,etc. Then there's all ythe non exclusive & exclusive 3rd party hits like tomb raider, lagacy of kain, burining road, GTA, GT, Rage Racer, Destruction Derby, etc,etc. I personally would not bother with this mostly, but I encourage it, as some people still like having a bash on older nostalgia filled games.

Nintendo fangirls will be telling us next that nintendo invented the wheel, the television, the lightbulb & the high powered turbo vibrators that nintendo fangirls mums used during their pregnancies that led to the irreversable braindamage that most of these nintendo fangirls suffered.

"SONY MAKE CHEAP ELECTRONICS! NINTENDO MAKE GAMES."

Goldstar & Omni made cheap electronics, Sony have been at the leading edge of electronics in most ares for so many years now, that it's inevatable that their reign had to end. Especially considering the cheaper korean & chinese stuff on the market today.
As for nintendo making games......Well they'd want to, as no one else noteworthy is making them for nintendo's console hardware..... So buy a revolution & enjoy mario 42.5, mario kart 16.2, mario tennis 12, mario golf 14, mario party 88.6 & the mario's gay brother luigi's world, while the rest of us grown ups enjoy a decent varied catologue of games on real machines, with real 3rd party support on either our 360's or ps3's. I only planned to buy a ps3, but I have decided that a 360 is needed as well, so basically mario & his merry band of loyal, butt loving, gay followers can kiss my ass.

Bring my 360 on, then my ps3 around december. The only two next gen consoles that will exist.

Who wants anothe mario & a back catologue of 8 & 16bit games that are mostly bad anyway & the ones that aren't will be unplayable by todays standards. If I wanted to play 16bit games I'd have never sold or upgraded from my snes & I would trade my 61" hd rear pro in for a 34cm caffa tube tv.

The insult isn't that Sony is incorporating a virtual console of their own into the ps3, it's the PR games that Sony has been playing these past few weeks. Instead of giving their fans what they want, they're more concerned with strategically timed press releases that seek to diminish the features of rivals. I'm no marketing wiz, but it all comes across as a desperate ploy, especially from a company that pushes bluray and DRM at all costs. If Sony doesn't focus on one thing (namely their new format) it'll hurt them in the long run as they succeed in confusing the hell out of customers.

digital distribution is definitely not something that nintendo has a monopoly on. its been going on for quite some time actually. if you want to throw around the whole stealing ideas philosphy, you will have to admit that nintendo "stole" the idea from someone else first.

the source for this rumor is gamesindustry.biz, not sony. sony has never announced anything of this sort. as a matter of fact, sony still hasnt officially announced that they will even feature some form of online service yet. wait it out everyone and once we get some details and facts you guys can continue to speculate based on facts. for now we are speculating based on speculation. so dont get all upset and mad next week when sony announces their real plans and your favorite rumored feature is no where to be found. sony hasnt announced anything except blu-ray, rsx and the cell. even the consoles and controllers were concept designs. [does anyone remember how the psp looks alot different from that early concept model?]

#73. i love my psp. i knew what i was getting into when i bought it, so i dont feel let down in the slightest. same feeling i had with my ps2. it does everything i want. im not going to complain that i cant watch a umd on my tv screen, sony never promised that; i dont expect it. im not going to complain about loading times, because other than wipeout pure, havent bought a single game that require more than a few seconds of loading. [and wipeout pures loading isnt as bad as people say, either]. ive only lost power twice while playing over the last year, so i could care less about battery life. i think people are complaining because they can see areas where the psp could be better. every great device will have great shortcomings too.

#75. great post. if i was a moderator i would definitely give you credit for a solid insightful post, without resorting to namecalling. [not too much, anyways]

#80. sony hasnt made ANY press releases since when? about TGS? they havent said much of anything about ps3, just vague comments that have been obsessed over by the media and blown out of proportion by the fans. dont get mad at sony, get mad at the media for making a huge deal out of misquotes, and false "leaks". get mad at sony pr for keeping everyone in the dark and testing all of our respective attention spans.

SONY LIES!

Apparently, we're all gullible morons. Why else would Sony continue to feed us these empty promises? They assume we're all idiots who can't think for ourselves, and we anxiously await their new console, completely oblivious to their past PR tactics.

Sony tells us what we want to hear, regardless of wether or not the PS3 will do it or not. That's part of why the Dreamcast failed.

They pulled it with the PSP, estimating it would cost $399-$499. When it launches for $249, you think you're getting an awesome deal. They're doing the same with the PS3 right now.

Sony's the puppetmaster; we're the puppets.

xbox360dsPSP,
I just want to point out that the PS3 is *not* PowerPC based. Yes, both are made by IBM, but PS3 is based off the cell architecture, which is being touted as the greatest thing since pre-sliced cheese. We'll find out, though.

And I hear it has graphics as good as Toy Story! Awesome!

Wow, I'm glad i brought my boots b/c the bullshit is getting thick. Has anyone considered the timeline on this one. I think yesterday we were discussing whether the final design specs were even going to be ready in time to develop the games to meet the launch date. Now sony has an online system to get running, and a downloadable network of games that they are "considering"

Why is everyone arguing over a false premise? It only makes you appear uninformed and fanatical.

Nintendo didn't "invent" the concept of downloadable content, and I find it irritating that people are actually trying to argue that point either way. I gather what most are upset (or irked) about is the idea that Sony might lift the idea of the virtual console, which IS a Nintendo original concept. I was irked at first, but now think it's just a bad idea if Sony were to implement it.

(See, most all of the game hardware giants have relied on backwards compatibility as a staple in future console iterations. This makes the transition from one generation to another smoother. But with a virtual console, publishers can provide access to classics from any generation of gaming, not just the immediate previous.)

If Sony wants to go for it, then let them – and just watch where the chips fall. I personally find it a distracting revelation (if true) given all that's already involved with the PS3. What happened to moving the industry forward... the Blu-Ray, Cell processor, next-gen graphics? It would seem like taking a step backwards to just add something in that isn't needed for launch. I think if they're gonna do it, they should implement whatever service they develop a year or two into the console's life. This way the virtual console doesn't interrupt the message of raw power...

And on second thought, I really don't think it makes any sense to have the service at all. I mean, Sony isn't about the past or past games. What bits of info we've gotten so far have screamed "FUTURE", "BETTER GRAPHICS", and "MORE SOPHISTICATED RESOURCES". What benefit does a back catalog really have for Sony? Are Sony gamers really looking to by this expensive media machine to play a back catalog of games? Do I really want to play six or eight-year-old games on a machine that is supposed to be a beast? I gotta think that most would answer with a "no" – or a "meh" at best.

On the other hand, the virtual console really seems to make sense with the Rev, and i'm not sure if it's due to Nintendo's stellar and deep back catalog or the nostalgia factor. Probably a little of both. By now most gamers (like me) who grew up with a Nintendo are in their 20s. And if I'm any good indication, I like current-gen games alright, but yearn for the simplicity and arcade-like pace of yesteryear. I don't think I'm that alone in this respect, as I've seen a whole heap of enthusiasm from gamers (casual, hardcore, or former) looking for that retro satisfaction that brought them out of childhood.

Sony doesn't have those types of games or the games I remember way back when. But Nintendo does.

Bottom line here... Sony needs to be on message and clear about what their machine is going to provide in the coming months if they want to garner some consumer support. It's not that Playstation-enthusiasts aren't still gung-ho about the PS3. I'm just thinking that those who aren't in their camp – or who aren't sure about it – need to know exactly why they need to buy the machine. News like this, true or not, only confuses consumers.

IF U BELIEVE THIS YOU ARE IDIOTSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.....
NO OFEENCE. FF7 IS 4 DIScs well over 2gig. WER THA HELL R U GONNA GET THE TIME 2 down 2gigs of INFO and STORE IT. HARD DRIVES ARENT CHEAP.

a NES GAME IS 256kb THATS IT. ONLY 256kb.
Mario64 is only 6MB. CAN U BELIEVE MARIO64 is only 6gb. This is worthy f DOWNLOadin but comeone 2gig for ff7. This is the biggest lie in history!!!!!! and i cant believe i even wrote this so u ppl can understand.!!!

typo error mario64 is only 6mb not 6gb

I finally realized just why Shigeru Miyamoto was so darn paranoid about his product's info in the first place.

#85

The Cell is at heart a PowerPC variant with a lot of DSPs bolted on. Developers will address it much as they would a box with a PPC CPU and some DSPs. Putting it all on one die doesn't change that anymore than the 486 having the FPU built in was a drastic coding change from a separate 386 CPU and 387 FPU.

#89

FFVII and similar games are far less massive than you might believe at first glance. A major portion of the game is duplicated across all of the CDs. This is why you can boot from any disc and have near complete freedom of movement including places that no longer serve any useful purpose to the game once the player has reached a later disc. Eliminate the FMVs or use a more effiient modern codec or replace them with realtime animation and the game is reduced to a single CD more or less.

Recall how Resident Evil II was taken from a PS1 CD and made to fit in a mere 512 megabit (64 megabyte) N64 cartridge? This brings up another factor: Most CD-ROM and DVD games use uncompressed Red Book audio for their soundtracks. Some things, like frequently repeated sound effects, may be stored in compressed form to save RAM usage but for sound streaming off of a disc with room to burn the simplest approach with the lowest overhead is to play the audio straight off the disc. Replace that audio with compressed audio at high quality and you get the same soundtrack in a fraction of the space. The same with FMV sequences. Re-encoding the source material in something like MPEG-4 stuffs the same video in far less space while delivering much higher quality than was common with the M-JPEG codec used in typical PS1 games.

For the record, NES games got up to 512K or 4 Mb. As mentioned above, N64 games got up to 512 Mb or 64 MB.

The idea that Sony cannot offer a strong library of past classics simply doesn't hold up. While Nintendo has the strongest first party library, a major portion of what inspires fond memories of the consoles of yore are third party titles. These publishers are free to take their games to any platform they like, as seen with recent collections of MegaMan games running on platform other than where they originated. Porting the games is more costly than emulation but these are minor costs compared to entirely new games and affords the opportunity to update the graphics and sound while maintaining the gameplay. It is that gampelay that inspires the fondest memories, not the wretched AV limits of the era.

Much of the process of inserting new codecs and appropiate data files can be automated in the case of games that used popular tools from Sony and others.

When you consider how many third party NES and SNES games that are now available on the PS1/PS2 and could easily be part of Sony's online offering, it becomes apparent that the third party properties carry a lot of weight. Note how many have already been made available on the Xbox 360 for download. Once upon a time Streetfighter II was a major third party asset for Nintendo. Now it is offered on a console whose make wasn't in the console business when the SNES was king thanks to a stranglehold on third party titles.

Downloading a gigabyte isn't that big a deal if you aren't in a great hurry. Just ask anyone who regularly tries out new Linux distributions. Broadband speed are continuing to improve. Downloading an enire CD while you sleep is now common. If implemented properly the download can be interrupted while the console used for more strenuous activities and restarted when the console decides it is being unused. In cases where streaming is fast enough to provide the soundtrack audio files and FMV the actual game code and core data is only a few dozen megabytes at most and can be downloaded for playing within a reasonable period of minutes rather than hours.

#92

That was an excellent reponse.However how long would it take to compress all those games?

Ps1 games had FMV's which took more space than the actual games... which is also a problem.

and how many ppl are willing to wait that long to download a gig of memory. I live in UK and over here everything is driven by speed, graphics, technology and lifestyle (even though im not). this is why the psp is so popular here (despite BAD loading times).

PLUS why would you want to download PS1 games. I sure hell dont want to play crappy WCW mayhem again and smackdown(i dont know how tha hell that became popular, wrestlemania 2000 was the greatest wrestling game despite it being poorly advertised)

How long would it take to compress the FMV from a game? Assuming you have the original rendering in a standard format, about an afternoon. Even less time for the music tracks. (Ever rip a CD? It's about that simple.) The tools for this sort of thing are far better than they were when the PS1 was the major platform. Producing the compressed files would be the least labor intensive part of the whole process. Far more time would go into the task of enabling the newer codecs and testing the resulting game. Even with the source code and good tools there is still a need for dev team to examine the code and understand what exactly is going on before they can expect to alter the code without problems. Even in the unlikely event that the original coders were available for the job, after all this time the code wouldn't be immediately familiar.

While it wouldn't provide the instant gratification of downloading 20+ year old 8-bit games measured in kilobytes, there are plenty of classic PS1 titles that are fairly small and after updating for better compression could be small enough to play within half an hour of initiating the download at the broadband speeds that are typical in the US. (Many major game markets offer far better speeds and can transfer an entire full capacity CD image in well under an hour. Those markets will drive online distribution while other regions' broadband infrastructure plays catch-up.) As mentioned before, most games that span multiple CDs are actually much smaller than they first appear when you eliminate the redundancy of repeating the same material on each disc. Additionally, as also mentioned before, the download need not be complete for gameplay to begin. An FMV sequence that isn't used until hours into the game will have plenty of time to download in the background, even if the transfer rate is fairly placid. The lowest common broadband speeds allow for a remarkable amount of date to be acauired if you're too busy playing to be concerned with the progress meter. Unless you're given to marathon sessions, chances are that a larger game will have plenty of time to download the material faster than the player needs it. Every game has some degree of linearity that aids this approach.

Another option is to have the initial download be a free trial. If the game doesn't prove engaging there is no need to purchase it and download the remainder. This facility would be where online distribution offers another advantage to reaching consumers. Good games are rewarded and those cannot even manage a convincing interactive demo are deserving losers.

Why would you want to download crappy PS1 games? Well, you wouldn't. But are you of the opinion that the PS1 library has nothing to offer, especially to those with no previous experience of it? Many of these games continue to do a good business at retail, so there is good reason to believe there would be a market for them online at very low prices.

Nostalgia isn't for everyone and other cannot abide anything that has a dated appearance regardless of the gameplay quality. But that hardly determines the whole market. I have zero interest in many popular genres such as nearly all sports titles. The market for those types of games appears to be in good shapes without me as a customer.