DigitalBattle.com

In the days of catridge gaming playing games from a previous system meant you had to hook that system back up to your TV and slot the game in to achieve the appropriate tinglings of reminiscence. When storage formats were universalized via the adoption of CDs as the medium of choice the question of backwards compability began, even before it became an industry/gamer buzzword.

The PS2 was the first to feature it, allowing gamers to still play their old favorites. The Xbox 360 followed suit somewhat, with a few hundred original Xbox games playable. The Wii can handle any Gamecube title, though there likely aren’t too many people go back to. The PS3 offered backwards compatibility as well, but only on certain SKUs and only for a limited period of time.

If you didn’t buy one of the 60 gigabyte models you were out of luck as your system didn’t have the necessary hardware to play PS2 games. It seems that all might change though as Sony filed an application for a patent that would allow backwards compatability to be integrated into existing systems via a software update. According to the patent Sony has figured out a way to get the PS3’s cell processor to emulate the PS2’s emotion engine.

I admit that after trying to read through the garbled nonsense of patent filing I have no clue whether or not IGN has interpreted this correctly, so this could be for something else entirely, but it seems logical. Now whether this would be available for everyone is the question. They could hold it back for release with the PS3 Slim, offering it at a later date as a paid download to anyone with a non-slim PS3, or they could simply show they’re nice guys and release it for free.