Missing Emotion Engine on PS3 (US-80GB)

Later this month, my friends and I are heading to Tokyo to attend the Tokyo Game Show 2007 (TGS2007). We already made reservation for our trip from Kyoto-Tokyo. Now, what’s with the subject? I am actually deciding whether to purchase PS3 in US or here in Japan. A friend of mine seems to be going for the US PS3 for the 80GB model. Upon digging more info about the US version of 80GB model, I found out that the “Emotion Engine” chip is no longer available from this version on. For those who might not be familiar with this chip, it is part of the PS2’s hardware and is the core CPU for playing PS2 game titles.

Emotion Engine CPU - So what’s the drawback?

Well according to some who are having discussions here at TG-Daily, they are currently concerned with the PS3 80GB not being backward compatible for other game titles in PS2. As the new model including the Europe versions are now using software emulation technology instead of the previous PS2 chip hardware itself. So depending of the PS2 games, there might be a chance that it might run differently (or possibly fail?). To other sites I’ve read, Sony seems to be focusing instead on newer titles, however SCEA also assures that even if the Emotion Engine chip has been removed, the software solution they have would resolve the backward compatibility.