Is the PS3 backwards compatible?

Author: Ryan Garside
Published: 14th November 2006

Japanese people queuing for the Playstation 3.

As if you haven't been saturated in reports about the rush to buy a Playstation 3, more news regarding Sony's kit is filtering through for us to report to you.

First up, Reuters is reporting that Sony is having problems with its software. More specifically, the backwards compatibility with Playstation 1 and 2 games isn't working universally with every game. Apart from being an annoying bug for consumers, this will cause extra annoyance for Sony who spent a lot of money on the hardware to make the system backwards compatible.

The problem, however, isn't too uncommon with console launches and Sony plans to provide online updates to rectify it. If you remember back to the days of the PS2 release you'll know that their were compatibility issues to begin with there also and worst still, the Xbox launch saw discs being scratched.

Overall the PS3 launch has been a success, with Betanews reporting that 88,400 PS3's have been sold in the first weekend. Of that number 62% were the advanced 60 GB hard drive model with the best selling game being Ridge Racer 7 (selling 30,000 units). Despite all these numbers VideoGamesBlogger reports that 0.98 games have been sold per console, which means a lot of people have bought PS3's without buying any games. Is this an early indication that people will be buying the PS3 for the Blu-Ray drive? Only time will tell.

Would you buy a PS3 just to play Blu-Ray? Let us know in the forums.