GameSpot writes on official PS3 updates, among others, that the system will support Sony’s Blu-Ray high-def standard. The PS3 will also be backwards-compatible with PS1 and PS2 games, according to the report, contrary to earlier speculations that the PS3 will not fully support titles and game verisons released for the PS1 and PS2.
Sony will equip each PlayStation 3 system with a Blu-ray optical disc drive that can play games and movie discs. Each Blu-ray disc can hold up to 54GB worth of data, which should virtually guarantee that games won’t be left wanting for extra media space. During his Game Developers Conference 2006 keynote address, Sony’s Phil Harrison boasted that the storage capacity of a Blu-ray disc is large enough to hold localized content for all versions of a game, letting publishers ship one global disc instead of stamping out a new version for each language region. Games will be region-free, but movies will still have region locks preventing multi-region playback. However, according to Japanese IT Media, the Blu-ray spec now has North America, South America, and Asia (except for China) in region 1. If the spec doesn’t change, that means your US PlayStation 3 should be able to play those Blu-ray Godzilla movies imported from Japan. The PlayStation 3 also comes with support for many of the older disc formats, including CR-ROM, CDR+W, DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, and DVD+R. The system will also be backward compatible with PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 games.