Gaikai and Sony Team Up for Backwards Compatibility

By Brian P Rubin | 01 June 2012 | 7 Comments

A post on GamesIndustry this morning reports that the partnership between Sony and a game-streaming service rumored last week is real, and that the alliance between the game manufacturer and Gaikai will bring backwards compatibility back to the PlayStation 3—and possibly even the handheld Vita console. As you may know, the original version of the PS3 could play PS2 games, but that feature was taken out when the PS3 Slim model was created.

The post says that Sony’s first-party PS1 and PS2 games will be available to players via the cloud-streaming service, and that third-party publishers will have the opportunity to sell their games via the service as well.

The official announcement of Gaikai’s deal will be made at Sony’s E3 conference on Monday, at which point more details should emerge, such as pricing, availability, devices, etcetera.

The post doesn’t mention anything about costs, but it seems almost certain that there’d be some kind of regular subscription fee to take advantage of a service like this. How much would you be willing to pay each month to stream PlayStation classics to your console? I’m thinking…mmmm…ten bucks? MAYBE fifteen?

Via GamesIndustry

7 Comments

Posted by Landon Robinson on 01 June 12 at 7:51am

+1 for the BTTF image.
Posted by Justin Collins on 01 June 12 at 7:59am

FINALLY!! I can’t wait to be able to play battlefront 2 again without having to switch out my ps3 for my ps2 :P (I have a slim)
Posted by Roberto on 01 June 12 at 12:51pm

Didn’t they take this feature out way before the slim? I thought only the launching PS3′s (and a fewa after) had it and everyone else just got screwed over like I did. (Have a FAT model)
- Posted by soulprovider on 01 June 12 at 7:01pm
  
  Backwards compatibility was implemented in the 60gb ps3 and the first generations of 80gb ps3, all other versions did not contain ps2 backwards compatibility.
Posted by Zero on 01 June 12 at 8:08pm

Megaman X 4 – 6, please for the love of god bring them in, they were my childhood.
Posted by dorkgeniuz21 on 02 June 12 at 4:36am

If this thing works for the vita, it will be the closest we get to remote play of ps2 games so who can be mad..Now see this is a service im willing to pay for unlike xbox live….I could see this service selling tons of 3g vitas
Posted by Kelly on 02 June 12 at 11:30am

I think if we already owned the PS1 or PS2 game, we should be given free access to the game for PS3 at the very least. Not sure how it could be proven though, maybe insert the original disks into the PS3 and it could read it to see if its authentic, then send Sony the ok to allow access to a streaming/downloadable version of it?

I still have a first gen PS3 and only played PS2 games on it once soon after I first bought the system. Cant see myself paying money for an older game again unless its been updated to HD or something