Today Sony had some bad news for the European Playstation 3 market. The European (PAL) console will be a modified version with less backwards compatibility than that of the Japanese and US versions. “The backwards compatibility is not going to be as good as the U.S. and Japan models,” a Sony spokesperson told the Reuters news-agency.

While Sony claims that about 98 % of old games can be played on the PlayStation 3 game console sold in Japan and the United States, not all games for the PlayStation 2 will run on the PAL version of the console. The chip made specifically for PS2 compatibility that was built into the original machines will be removed from the European version. Older PS games will instead be emulated through software. The PS3 is being released to the rest of the world on March 23.