PS3's B.C. problems and how to blow it out of perspective

We all heard the news; the PS3 isn't fully backwards compatible with every PlayStation game. Of the 8,000 or so games in the PlayStation universe, roughly 200 of them won't work as advertised. It looks like the backcompat issue is yet another black mark on Sony's already stumbling reputation ... but is this really that bad?

Business Week is one of those groups who apparently think background music not playing right in Radiata Stories during cutscenes is going to topple the Sony empire like Visigoths over Rome (alright, a bit extreme). They claim "the bad publicity could ultimately leave Sony at a disadvantage compared with Microsoft and Nintendo." We find that a bit of a stretch when Sony's got bigger issues out there and we haven't heard a peep from Microsoft's backwards compatibility efforts since August.

Yes, Sony does have a few bruises from their blunders this past year; however, since the PS3 is on a completely different operating system (remember, we have to download emulators just to get DOS or even Windows 95 stuff working on Windows XP) such incompatibilities are expected. If anything, the meager number of games that aren't 100% perfect -- and how minor the problems are with the bulk of the 200 -- is incredible. If you can read Japanese, here is a handy tool you can check to see if your favorite games work.