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Jan 24 / Ozymandias

Good News for Sony: PS3 Backward Compatibility Fixed

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No, not being sarcastic - it appears there’s finally some unabashedly good news for PS3 owners out there. According to Arstechnica (and many other sites), the new PS3 1.5 firmware update has resolved the jaggies issue when playing PS2 titles. Means I can finally play Okami!

In the spirit of fairness, I’ll link back to an earlier post where I stated I didn’t expect they’d be able to fix this issue due to the lack of a hardware scaler. Apparently they were able to clean up the scaling in software – at least for older titles. We’ll see if that work can extend to PS3 native titles as well.

About the only “negativity” I’m seeing on the web around this update is that some people seem to think the output of a PS2 title running back compat on a PS3 is “softer”. You can judge for yourself from the images below (with thanks to Dot50Cal from NeoGaf). Frankly, I don’t see a difference – do you?

Resident Evil 4 – PS2 (running native on PS2 hardware):

Resident Evil 4 – PS3 (PS2 title running in back compat on PS3):

Related posts:

  1. PS3 Backward Compatibility Jaggies
  2. PS3 Backward Compatibility Reduced due to Cost Reductions?
  3. Good news for Nintendo Fans: EA supporting Wii with at least six titles
  4. Gamesindustry.biz Email Update: Sony Begins PS3 Manufacturing
  5. Nintendo Wii at $249 Good…

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  • http://alijahgreen.spaces.live.com Alijah Green

    yeah i can see a difference but very little, tip of the gun and house in the background are the most noticible

  • one of few articles

    that are not Public Relation driven :)

  • Olav

    Oh my… Sony is doing something right!

  • Olav

    Oh my… Sony is doing something right!

  • Grazen

    You’re just trying to be "overly" fair when you say that you can’t see a difference, to make up for your "less than" fair comments about the difficulties that Sony would have doing exactly what your pictures show that they’ve been able to do!

    There *is* a difference in the two shots, the PS3 version is "softer" while the native PS2 is "sharper".  It seems like that’s just a function of how they fixed the scaling issue – they blurred the screen. It’s still a huge improvement though, and given that there’s no games wirth playing on the PS3 at the moment, being able to toss in some Okami and FFXII is going to be a treat!

  • islandkiwi

    This is good news, but it coincides with the Ken Kutaragi news, which I think has far more impact.  Oz, would love to hear your thoughts about Ken’s newest "opportunity".

  • zs450

    I do see a difference in the two shots. The PS3 version is only a little softer, but, it’s there. It seems as if all of the PS3 games that I’ve seen (I don’t and won’t own one) are lighter and softer than anything they’re compared to.

  • i think

    the difference is due to HDMI vs Component or whatever the connection ps2 is using

  • Jon Boy

    The dirt seems to looks a little better on the PS3…

    But seriously, I can’t really tell a difference. This is good news for those who spent the extra hundred.

  • imaginedbug

    Put both images on top of eachother in Photoshop and turn the top-most layer on and off. Or put the images in two tabs (if your browsers has tabs) and then switch between the tabs.

    Unless you have bad eyes, you’ll notice a difference in the trees, the hand and gun and the house in the back. It’s almost as if a faint gaussian blur was applied to the PS2 image to get to the PS3 one.

    The question isn’t so much if either looks better in a screenshot, but if such a blur is noticable when playing. Some early Xbox 360 games (PD0) used blur to such an extent that it became annoying.

  • insane_cobra

    I can see the difference, it’s not big, but definitely noticeable. I don’t think I would mind it, even though I prefer the way PS2 handles it.

  • http://www.gamertagradio.com Feelz Good

    Wow, good news for Sony.  Too bad I went to Best Buy and Circuit City last night and had my choice of 7 PS3′s.  Meanwhile a woman dies trying to win a Wii.

  • Anonymous

    RE: "I can see the difference, it’s not big, but definitely noticeable. I don’t think I would mind it, even though I prefer the way PS2 handles it."

    I updated to 1.50 last night and tried Okami (both before and after). It’s a night and day difference. And I don’t think anyone would mind how it looks.

  • Laner

    The PS3 shot is under-saturated… blacks look more like dark grey.

  • Aedrin

    "Put both images on top of eachother in Photoshop and turn the top-most layer on and off. Or put the images in two tabs (if your browsers has tabs) and then switch between the tabs."

    What is your home gaming setup like? I’m asking because if you have to do this to see a difference, then either you have a very keen eye or it’s not a noticable difference.

  • http://www.slashcry.com dozenz

    yeah there is a negligible blurriness, and for me its really only apparent in the gun and in his hair, but it has to be everwhere.  I’m sure when actual playing and moving around you won’t notice a thing anyway.

  • Opticon

    why does it look blury in the ps3 version? shouldent it be sharper?