Skip to main content

Party Like It’s 2003 As PlayStation 2 Emulation Is Coming To PlayStation 4


If you’re into big pixels, Sony has a treat for you. The company has secretly been working on a fully functioning PlayStation 2 emulator for the PlayStation 4. It is taking advantage of this emulator for classic PS2 Star Wars games. But the company also confirmed to Wired that it is working on bringing more PS2 games to the PS4.
You can buy a Star Wars Battlefront bundle that comes with a PlayStation 4, EA’s latest Star Wars game and a bunch of old games — Super Star Wars, Star Wars: Racer Revenge, Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, and Star Wars: Bounty Hunter.
Eurogamer tried these games and got a nice surprise. These games weren’t updated for the PlayStation 4. Instead, they run inside a PlayStation 2 emulator.
You’ll find much of the PlayStation 2’s classic iconography starting with the start and select buttons, virtual memory cards and the good old PlayStation 2 logo when you boot these games. It also means that there will be a lot of upscaling and things can look ugly on a big television.
So what about other games? Sony’s plans remain unclear. The company could sell old titles in its online store, or it could create a sort of subscription service to access a library of classic PlayStation 2 games. You may remember playing GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas, Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, God of War games, Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, and more. The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling console in history after all.
But many gamers would prefer a firmware update that would add this emulator for free. If you still have your PlayStation 2 discs, there is no reason why today’s new emulator wouldn’t be able to handle these games just fine.
Microsoft added Xbox 360 backwards compatibility for the Xbox One just last week. Many gamers praised Microsoft’s announcement at E3 as customers don’t have to pay anything to play their old Xbox 360 games.
Yet, Microsoft has to develop a patch for each Xbox 360 game, making it a slow process — 104 Xbox 360 games are now available on the Xbox One so far.
By betting on older games, Sony can make an emulator run at full speed and doesn’t have to spend time on each game to make it compatible with the PlayStation 4. So let’s hope that Sony won’t make you pay for 15-year-old games.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Five budget-friendly open source storage servers

Storage is essential for the enterprise: Data must be stored. Data must be retrieved. Data must be shared. Data must be secured. At the same time, storage must not consume the entirety of your IT budget. Fortunately, you can find effective solutions in the world of open source. Outside of cost effectiveness, one of the biggest benefits of these solutions is the ability to modify them to perfectly fit your needs. You can make minor changes or even roll your own storage solution based on one of these tools. If you want enterprise support and a "solution in a can" that will meet just about any enterprise storage need, you should turn to Red Hat or SUSE. Both Linux-based companies offer some of the most powerful enterprise-ready tools on the market. But if you'd rather get your hands dirty and craft something of your own—something that won't demolish your budget—these five open source tools are a great place to start. 1: ownCloud ownCloud ( Figure ...

Visa confirms Coinbase wasn’t at fault for overcharging users

Yesterday, we wrote that Coinbase customers were being charged multiple times for past transactions. While some speculated that the erroneous withdraws were down to a Coinbase engineering issue, Coinbase issued a statement saying it wasn’t liable for the duplicate charges. The blame, instead, rested with Visa for the way it handled a migration of merchant categories for cryptocurrencies, Coinbase said. While you can read my post yesterday for an in-depth description of what happened, the basic gist is that Visa refunded and recharged (under a different merchant category) a month of old transactions. Many users saw the recharge come through before the refund processed, making it look like they were double charged. Honestly, the issue was likely exacerbated by existing payment rails — it’s normal for refunds to take multiple days to show up on credit and debit statements. But here’s where it gets weird — this morning Visa issued a statement to some publications shifting the blam...

Facebook Now Supports PGP To Send You Encrypted Emails

You can now instruct Facebook to encrypt every email it sends to you so nobody — not even the NSA — is likely to be able to read your messages anytime soon. All you have to do is import your public PGP key into your Facebook settings and you’re good to go. The problem here, of course, is that most people have no idea how public/private key email encryption works and how to even get started with it. In the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks, a number of organizations, including Google, promised to completely hide the complexities of end-to-end email encryption from regular users. Very few of these products have materialized so far, however — not for lack of trying, but because this is actually a very complex problem, both from a technical and user experience perspective. Facebook uses the well-established PGP scheme (the GNU Privacy Guard implementation of  OpenPGP, to be precise) to encrypt messages and tools lik...

Microsoft allays privacy concerns of Windows 10 users

Microsoft attempts to put all rumours related to Windows 10 privacy concern to rest GettyImages Allaying concerns of Windows 10 users over privacy, Microsoft has said information is collected only to offer a better OS experience. Besides, it provides users the ability to have control over the information collected. Microsoft asserts that Windows 10 is based on these two major principles. Besides, the data collected from every system is encrypted to the company's servers and remains in secure facilities. The company says information such as device ID, device type and application crash data is collected in order to help the user obtain an even more secure OS experience. Microsoft clarifies that the data does not include the user's personal files or content. Another reason that Microsoft collects data is to offer a better personalised windows experience. This includes updates on game scores, app recommendations and the common words one types in messaging. If users are ...