Soon after Sony removed the Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer chip from the European PS3, which effected the backwards compatibility with PS2 games, the gaming community were suprised to get awesome results, the PS3 was able to more number of PS2 and PS1 games.

Harrison was questioned on the logic behind the downgrade, to which he says, “Our thinking involves being able to bring the latest hardware specification of the PS3 to Europe, although that does mean an initial slight reduction in the number of PS2 components. But it’s important to put that into context: there will still be thousands of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 titles playable on the PS3 at launch. We’re working to introduce a resource on the Web to detail which titles will have backwards compatibility. And as we make firmware upgrades, we will be able to add to that list.”

Harrison says, “The situation is changing every day, but on March 23, we expect the list to include over 1,000 PS2 titles,” adding that it’s Sony “policy” to be concentrating compatibility on the biggest PS2 blockbusters.

If Sony would have released plans to support over 1,000 PS2 games on the March 23 launch, perhaps it would have prevented much of the uproar. Future owners of the European PS3 may not enjoy the same level of backwards compatibility as a North America or Japan console, but Harrison believes that most gamers will care only about new generation games and not the old ones.

“I think the reasons why people buy PS3s are the new games that it offers, and the HD content experiences provided by games and movies,” says Harrison.