14 DAY TRIAL // The PS3 launches on March 23 in Australia, Africa and Europe right? Right, everyone knows that but what everyone doesn't know is that the PAL PS3 that launches in thesePAL territories will not be able to run as many PSone and PS2 games as the NTSC version launched in Japan and America. It's well known that the NTSC PS3 can run up to 98 percent of the available PSone and PS2 titles, while the PAL version of Sony's last released console doesn't manage that good of a percentage in older titles and people should be fully aware of this fact, so they don't make a mistake.
This wouldn't have been so alarming if David Reeves of SCEE didn't make a statement such as the following: "Software will take over some of the functionality that was originally taken care of by dedicated chips, which means far fewer PlayStation 2 (PS2) games can be played on a European PS3 compared with the Japanese and American PS3 models which play 98 percent of old games."
This statement suddenly stroke people with concern, but why? The truth was there all the time, people knew of this but hearing it in a different context made them jump to conclusions. Here's how our brains work:
You, as a human being who has lived on this planet from the moment of birth and has learned about the basic facts of life and the surrounding environment (counting our solar system), know that the sun isn't going to die out on us for millions of years to come. Yet, if you hear a news bulletin saying something like "scientists have discovered exactly how much time the sun has before it turns into a red giant and dies," your first impression is not a pleasant one at all, feeling that there is some kind of danger, when in fact there is nothing to worry about.
That's pretty much what happened with Reeves's statement, so keep still, the NTSC PS3 will run a good number of older PS titles and keep this one in mind: the sun isn't due for boom in less than 5 billion years.