Today, Sony announced a new promotion on the PlayStation Network, which will see the launch of new PSN exclusive games for every week in October.
The new promotion, titled "Only On PlayStation Network," will begin on October 4th, when Sony will launch Recoil Games' Rochard and the indie title Eufloria, developed by Alex May, Rudolf Kremers, and Brian Grainger.
Alongside this first batch of titles, Sony will debut a handful of classic PlayStation 2 titles on PSN, including Clover Studio's God Hand, Capcom's Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, Konami's Ring of Red, and Vanillaware titles GrimGrimoire and Odin Sphere. Each of these titles will be available for $9.99.
The following week, the promotion will feature Playbrains' Sideway: New York and Sodium Collection, a bundle that includes new upgrades and items for the PlayStation Home-exclusive Sodium series.
The week of October 18 will see the debut of Hand Circus' Okabu and Ratloop Asia's sidescrolling action title Rocketbirds.
The final week of the promotion will include Sucker Punch's InFamous: Festival of Blood and Q-Games' PixelJunk Sidescroller.
While Sony has yet to announce pricing for most of the titles in this promotion, PlayStation Plus members will receive a 20 percent discount during the launch week of each title, and in addition, users who spend $60 on PSN content in October will receive $10 of PSN credit in November.
Sony also noted that both Eufloria and Okabu come from the company's Pub Fund program, through which Sony provides funding to indie developers and published their games on PSN. Sony announced a new $20 million, three-year investment plan for the program last July.
The subtext of this announcement I haven't seen anyone talk about yet is that Sony has a software-only PS2 emulator for the PS3. It's probably very limited so far - Odin Sphere and GrimGrimoire are trivial to render, Ghosts to Glory was a delayed N64 title, and Ring of Red was one of the few PS2 games to come on a CD, so aside from God Hand they're all very technically undemanding.
So is Sony going to sit on this and let games trickle out as they get tested (and require repurchasing), or eventually open the floodgates and let people play PS2 games on their PS3s again?
That is a bloomin' good point: if Sony has got to the point where they can emulate at least some PS2 games in software on the PS3, then that's pretty spectacular news - though I'd guess it's probably using some form of HLE system rather than emulating the emotion engine at the instruction level.
In any case, this also means that when they get around to releasing the PS4 (which - conservatively, given Moore's law - is liable to be at least 8 times as powerful as the PS3), Sony could potentially emulate any PS2 game in software, giving them a huge back-catalog on day 1 of launch...
Have people forgotten that the 2nd gen (?) 2007 PS3s did actually ship with PS2 emulation in software? Obviously, it wasn't spectacularly compatible with random games, but it was there. They yanked it because it was a pain for them to maintain and as one exec said they'd rather have you buying PS3 games.
I imagine they're just hand-tuning it for each of these individual releases to make sure they work.
They haven't forgotten, because your claim is incorrect. The second gen PS3 emulation still required some custom hardware which was later removed. They yanked it because it cost money.
@Joe: They removed the PS2 CPU in the second gen PS3s which had the 'software' PS2 compat. Which bit of hardware was left in it that was still required for PS2 emulation, but removed in the PS3 Slim and is so tough to emulate?
So is Sony going to sit on this and let games trickle out as they get tested (and require repurchasing), or eventually open the floodgates and let people play PS2 games on their PS3s again?
As for allowing backward compatibility, my guess is that this will only work for downloadable games, and not for disc-based games.
In any case, this also means that when they get around to releasing the PS4 (which - conservatively, given Moore's law - is liable to be at least 8 times as powerful as the PS3), Sony could potentially emulate any PS2 game in software, giving them a huge back-catalog on day 1 of launch...
I imagine they're just hand-tuning it for each of these individual releases to make sure they work.
They haven't forgotten, because your claim is incorrect. The second gen PS3 emulation still required some custom hardware which was later removed. They yanked it because it cost money.
May I have some spyware with these downloads too please?
I hate you so much Sony.