Sony: No Regrets on God Of War II PS2 Lack

SCE VP reveals reasons behind not putting GoW2 on PS3.

Posted by Staff
Sony: No Regrets on God Of War II PS2 Lack
God of War II arrived pretty late in the PlayStation 2's life – in fact, you'd be forgiven for wondering why SCEA's Santa Monica team didn't just hold off and release the game as a PS3 launch title. Sony Computer Entertainment's senior vice president of product development, Shuhei Yoshida, explained to Game Informer why the game remained on PS2.

“I have never regretted the fact that we released God of War II on PS2,” Yoshida said. “We had a lot of debates about it, actually. I always firmly stood by keeping it on PS2. Many people, including marketing, suggested that maybe it should be moved to PS3.

“What I believed was that God of War II would be the best-selling and best game of the year. We had always sen that, at the launch of a platform, the developer has to spend a lot of time becoming familiar with the platform and software tools... I saw an opportunity for the Santa Monica team to complete their vision on a platform they totally understood.”

Makes sense, on the grand scheme of things. There have been many horror stories in the past of games switching to new platforms with little prior knowledge and suffering because of it – just look at Too Human for example (although that really was because it took so bloody long to finish, but you see our point).
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Comments

NiktheGreek 27 Jan 2010 11:32
1/2
I do genuinely like the fact that Sony committed itself to PS2 support during the early years of the PS3's shelf life. Such practices used to be rather more commonplace - it was easy to find new Master System software until about half-way through the Mega Drive's lifespan, and the same goes for NES/SNES, MD/Saturn and PS1/PS2.

I understand that sometimes a machine has been virtually eliminated from shop shelves before a replacement arrives (trying to find Saturn games in 1999 or Gamecube games in 2006 was a pain), but it's massively annoying when a machine with a sizeable market presence disappears overnight as the original Xbox did.
James 28 Jan 2010 23:19
2/2
Dumb move. This is another reason why lack of Backwards Compatibility sucks. If Sony did that later in the year while the PS3s were incompatible with the Playstation 2, then I start to notice that they just didn't try on the Backwards Compatibility feture on the PS3.

Thank god that I still have my working 60GB PS3.

Yea, You either have to have a 20/60/80 GB PS3 system, or you have to hook up an outdated machine to your TV just to play this game, causing me to deal with the wires that tangle and these cumbersume memory cards.

Now Seriously John. Refusal to put the game on the PS3 when the PS2 is on the last legs is quite silly, especially when YOU said that you took off backwards compatibility because you said so and you say to the consumers: "People buy PS3 to play PS3 games".

MAYBE if you kept backwards compatibility on the system or at least put God of War II on the PS3, maybe you would have more money in your pockets.
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