A Complication with PS3 backwards compatibility? Plus extra PS3 details

More backwards compatibility news following the 360 info from last week:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/711/711242p1.html

Assuming this is true and Sony wants to have software emulation working ~100% eventually, it is kind of interesting that they'd increase costs by including the PS2 chipset at launch. Granted, it shouldn't cost that much, but even an extra $25-$30 multiplied by millions of systems results in a large amount of (lost) money ($25 * 6M = $150M). Apparently, they must think it is important to have almost 100% BC at launch, as opposed to maybe a portion of the lineup BC at a cheaper price (through software emulation). I'm not sure how far along their software emulation is, but I wouldn't think it would be that bad....hopefully better than the 360 emulation considering the circumstances.

The other details are kind of interesting, especially the "large amount of flash memory,"but nothing really unexpected.

 

I'm not sure if the costs would be pushed onto the consumers, at least directly. It depends on how easily they can get the hardware emulation to work. The EE+GS shouldn't cost that much for Sony to make; they've already made 100+M of them in 6-7 years and will probably make another ~20+M in the next few years, not counting those going into the PS3. But putting that into the PS3 might increase the costs of other PS3 parts I guess (bigger space on the motherboard, among other things). They might need more than the EE+GS too (EX: PS2 RAM chips needed), which could increase costs, although hopefully that won't be necessary (EX: use PS3's RAM instead). I threw out the $25-$30 figure earlier, but there's no telling how much this will end up costing. It could be more or it could even be less.

Assuming it is in that area or even lower, I don't know why they'd push the cost on the consumers. It is kind of like them putting in another USB port; it will end up costing them more money (~$5 * 6M = ~$30M), but I don't know if that would mean the PS3 will now cost $505/$605, or that it could have been $495/$595.

Of course, they could offer a PS2 BC kit for ~$20 that "enables" BC. I doubt they'd do that though...unless a USB PS1/PS2 memory card and PS1/PS2 controller adapter counts.