I paid $600 for a PS3 right after launch, my biggest gripe about doing that is I bought it at the time for the full BC. But Sony bitched out and pulled BC to save a penny. They wouldn't even repair phats with a guarantee of return, they might have swapped it with a repaired non BC console instead. It wasn't the PS2 hardware that drove up price it was the Blu-ray and Cell which I didn't care for to be honest. The Cell itself really caused problems with development in early years, developers were having a hard time trying to figure out how to work around it, it took more time and money and resources. Probably why projects like Lair and Haze killed the companies that worked on them, companies once revered for their previous games. Anyhow, Japanese developers aren't built like western AAA developers and often have considerably less resources for costly development, I feel this might have been a large driving force with the Japanese shift toward handhelds. Other parts include Nintendo's Wii, which didn't offer any much in way of third party support, and the Xbox 360, which Japan doesn't give a shit about. And since the PS3 was so alienating to Japanese developers, that's why I think we saw a shift to handhelds thrive last gen in Japan. Anyhow, I was a bit disappointed in the PS3 largely because with the PS2 I had many expectations of Sony continuing things as usual both in terms of their 1st and 3rd party titles, and I feel that the console didn't live up to my expectations in many areas. I was fine playing my PS2 games on my PS3 which was kind of essential once I upgraded to an HDTV as PS2s were never built for that (they look like ass on an HDTV). But eventually fears that it might kick worried me, fears that the upside down CPU pasted on with some crusty untested environmentally friendly thermal paste that dries up, cracks, and fails, fears that it would die if I played it too much worried and I just stopped playing it. Eventually though they did bring out a nice BC library through emulation, so my fears were somewhat lifted as I know I can always just buy a new better PS3 and re-acquire most of my favorites digitally.
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