Exclusive: Sony's Phil Harrison Tells All on PS3 (page 3)

by Bro Buzz
May 13, 2006 00:00 AM PST

...On Backwards Compatibility

[The PS3 will have] almost perfect backwards compatibility. There will be some exceptions, but we believe those will be even less than we saw from PSOne to PS2.

"Backwards compatibility, as you know from PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, is a core value of what we believe we should offer. And access to the library of content people have created, bought for themselves, and accumulated over the years is necessary to create a format. PlayStation is a format meaning that it transcends many devices -- PSOne, PS2, and now PS3."

"If the developer wrote the game according to our technical requirements checklist, we will have what we believe will be almost perfect backwards compatibility. There will be some exceptions, there always are, but we believe those will be very few and far between. Even less so than we saw from PSOne to PS2."

...On Microsoft's Difficulties with Xbox 360 Backward Compatibility

"I don't believe that was backwards compatibility."

...On the Importance of the PS3's Hard Drive

The standard hard drive allows for downloadable content, but also better graphics -- just look at Heavenly Sword

"We know that the future of gaming is in a network era, and we have to have a writeable format. We have to have a format were users can purchase and download online and the only way to do that is with a hard disc drive."

"The 60 gig capacity is not only to download but to archive locally. The 60 gig solution will be attractive to users who want to PS3 as their primary music players, like me. I will put my entire music collection onto my PlayStation 3. I will archive all of my photos onto my PlayStation 3. It seems like a really insignificant feature but being able to simply slideshow your photos on your tv is actually a really compelling feature of PlayStation 3."

"And over time, downloading HD content -- whether it be TV content, film content -- clearly needs a lot of hard drive space."

...On the PS3's PSP Support

The 60 GB model will support Memory Sticks, which helps bridge content from the PS3 to the PSP

"With the PSP you've seen that, over time, the operating system has been upgraded to include many new features and functionalities and capabilities and we will do the same regarding the PS3. We will see the two devices become much more interoperable both at a media level, allowing content from one to the other, and at the applications level, where games for the PS3 will have a PSP component and vice versa. We demonstrated at the press conference one example of this where the PSP serves as a wing mirror for a driving game, a Formula One game."

"That was not intended to be a gimmick, but a feature we will add to the PS3 version so that when you play the PS3 version you can gameshare from the PS3 to the PSP the program required to do that. That will be a free of charge component that we ship on the PS3."