It's early in the morning, but we've got some good news for future European/PAL PS3 owners. Last week we learned about Sony nixing hardware backwards compatibility to be replaced with Cell emulation. The funky press release issued stated that a 'limited' range of PS2 games would run. Clearly, that was met with a very poor reception. Well, the semi-official PlayStation 3 blog page called ThreeSpeech has posted an interview with Phil Harrison. In the interview Harrison divulges a number of PAL PS2 games that'll be compatible with the PS3…over 1000. That's 1000+ out of just over 2000 PAL PS2 games available.
“The situation is changing every day, but on March 23, we expect the list to include over 1,000 PS2 titles,” Harrison said. When asked about if the focus was on the most popular games, “We can’t give any information about specific titles but, clearly, that would be our policy.” So, yes, your little sister's copy of Hello Kitty's Adventure to Waste of Money Land likely won't run. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the PS2's most notable games will. Additionally, compatibility will increase with every firmware update, so it probably won't take too long for B.C. support to be at a respectable percentage.
Lastly, when asked about a price-cut, Harrison felt the need to point out that the Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer that the PS3 had embedded is a "custom component" as opposed to the same hardware found in the PS2. And of course his comment on a price-cut: “Price reductions are something that we wouldn’t comment on specifically. But you know the business model very well – we strive to get the cost of manufacturing down as soon as possible, and as soon as we can pass cost savings onto the consumers, we will.”
There it is, folks. Over 1000 PAL PS2 games to be compatible, with frequent updates in firmware.