Europe gets delayed and crippled PS3 for more money

Now that is what I call a bargain. Europeans do not only have to wait longer for the Playstation 3 to hit the shelves, they also get a crippled PS3 that offers reduced backwards compatibility. And the best of all?

They pay even more for the package. I was not sure what to make of the story that Everton posted today on his connected internet blog, he missed to cite a source for his story entitled: "Playstation 3 To Have Less Backwards Compatibility in Europe" and I immediately performed a search to find out what was going on.

Yahoo reports that Sony's Playstation 3 will play fewer old games - which means Playstation 2 or 1 games - citing a Sony spokesman who mentioned that to the company. The apparent reason is that they removed some "parts" of the Playstation 3 that were used to increase backwards compatibility.

With the parts removed, to reduce production costs, the Playstation 3 will not reach the compatibility grade of US and Japanese systems. Software emulation will be used instead to provide that functionality, but the emulation is not as good as the hardware itself. That's why less Playstation 2 games will play on European Playstation 3 models.

If that is not enough the pricing for European systems is ridiculous. While the 60GB Playstation 3 can be bought in Japan for $497 and in the United States for $599 Europeans in the Eurozone have to pay an average of $787 for the premium version. Gamers in Great Britain pay $830 and Denmark tops it all with $969 for a Playstation 3.

A difference of almost $200 for a delayed, crippled Playstation 3? Now who is still going to buy this system? If you ask me, I'm happy with my Nintendo Wii and probably purchase a Xbox 360 soon. That is all I do need. My main gaming station is my computer anyways.

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