PS3 backwards compatibility to be around 1,000 titles at launch

D'you know who this is?  This cheery man is Phil Harrison, and he works at Sony.  Phil doesn't want you to be sad about the PS3's craptastic backward compatibility with PS2 games.  He wants you to look a bright, shiny, happy future – a future where you generally choose new titles rather than your back catalogue.

Phil sat down with Three Speech and said some words:

"there will still be thousands of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 titles playable on the PS3 at launch. It's very easy to over-react. 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" Phil Harrison

Feel better?  The component they've removed is apparently quite an expensive one, which Three Speech says bodes well for future PS3 price cuts.  However, not passing that saving on to the consumer, especially given the inflated price over the US and Japanese versions of the console, probably doesn't fill many European gamers with delight.

Three Speech [via I4U News]