The Emotion Chip dilemma

All PS3’s now run strictly on the Cell (CBEA) processor.

Is it awesome? Yes!
Is it backwards compatible? No!

Now that Sony has phased out the Graphics Synthesizer working in conjunction with the CBEA to lower costs, hopes of playing PS2 games on your PS3 is pretty much gone. The original launch of the PS3 had an Emotion chip option for extra money but it quickly phased it out at a time when the Wii and the X-box 360 were a ton cheaper and it needed to get the cost of the PS3 way down.

So if you want to make the PS3 backwards compatible you have 3 choices:

1. Find a Original “fat” PS3 with an Emotion Chip option.
2. Install your own Emotion Chip on your PS3
3. Use your PS2 along side of your PS3

Option 1 is the best option if you can find one. There’s not a ton of them out there and you may want to pop out the hard drive and upgrade it from the original 60GB. I just bought a 160 gig hard drive from Newegg.com for $40 so it’s not as much as you think.

Option 2 is a dead end. There is space on the mother board but you would have to be a surgeon putting it on and making it work without killing it. The Emotion Chip itself on the secondary market is about 100 bucks and for that you can buy yourself a new PS2 at Best Buy.

Option 3 is the most practical choice. If you got the spare input on your TV you can use both. Not sexy but rock solid.

I think the backward compatibility issue is a sore subject. The PS2 sold 150 million consoles and there still new games being sold for it. I bet most of us still have one. Sony says it will phase out the PS2 when there is “no longer demand for it.” So until then we have an imperfect division of gaming. I know it’s not the end of the world, but we gamers like perfection. We like high scores and replaying games on expert mode, collecting all items and trophies. We don’t like loose ends. You can play a “PS1” game on the PS3 but not a PS2 game for the time being. I think if there is any hope it may lay in the Play Station Store. The success of the downloadable game has been overwhelming and it is foreseeable that the PS2 catalog will be rolled out at some point. So until then don’t get that PS2 controller cable tangled.