Rumors from left field: emulator firmware to eventually upscale PSOne/2 titles?

So Las Vegas must be laying odds on what will happen at GDC 2007 in San Francisco (although this writer’s money is on a StarCraft II… I wish), but this one is right out of left field. The same Rumor Reporter who hinted at 32-player Warhawk dogfights tossed something into the ring that just blew that buzz away. Or generate accusations of natural fertilizer-peddling, depending on whether you buy this or not.

He claims (from a nameless source) that in the near future, probably summer, the same emulator firmware that’s being used as the backwards compatibility core of European PS3s will have the ability to upscale PSOne and PS2 titles to 1080i/720p using the PS3’s HD scaler (plus hardware for PSOne titles, perhaps).

He says that not all legacy PS games will be supported by this feature at first. He says that Sony will concentrate on expanding the compatibility list of the emulator software first. Still, the expectation is that a few legacy titles at a time will be upscale-ablelized (for lack of a better word) and added to the list at intervals.

If this is true, (if this is true), we believe it is either quite possible or contemplated that US and Japanese-release PS3s will get a similar treatment – either with future firmware updates overriding the Emotion Engine chip (most likely option), or complementing the hardware compatibility in those PS3s. But that’s as much off the top of our head as this rumor is from left field. (Either way, it’s not like a feature like this can be locked in one region. Can it?)

And the final claim from Rumor Reporter is that all of this will be announced at the GDC 2007 Sony keynote. He even bets on simply sitting back and waiting for the official announcement. Now you know why RAINBOW was deployed to Las Vegas. This sort of rumor-mongering can be murder on the bookies before the confirmation/denial.

Dang, R.R., when you say you “send Sony fans’ heads spinning”, we don’t know whether to clap our hands or call an exorcist.

So Las Vegas must be laying odds on what will happen at GDC 2007 in San Francisco (although this writer’s money is on a StarCraft II… I wish), but this one is right out of left field. The same Rumor Reporter who hinted at 32-player Warhawk dogfights tossed something into the ring that just blew that buzz away. Or generate accusations of natural fertilizer-peddling, depending on whether you buy this or not.

He claims (from a nameless source) that in the near future, probably summer, the same emulator firmware that’s being used as the backwards compatibility core of European PS3s will have the ability to upscale PSOne and PS2 titles to 1080i/720p using the PS3’s HD scaler (plus hardware for PSOne titles, perhaps).

He says that not all legacy PS games will be supported by this feature at first. He says that Sony will concentrate on expanding the compatibility list of the emulator software first. Still, the expectation is that a few legacy titles at a time will be upscale-ablelized (for lack of a better word) and added to the list at intervals.

If this is true, (if this is true), we believe it is either quite possible or contemplated that US and Japanese-release PS3s will get a similar treatment – either with future firmware updates overriding the Emotion Engine chip (most likely option), or complementing the hardware compatibility in those PS3s. But that’s as much off the top of our head as this rumor is from left field. (Either way, it’s not like a feature like this can be locked in one region. Can it?)

And the final claim from Rumor Reporter is that all of this will be announced at the GDC 2007 Sony keynote. He even bets on simply sitting back and waiting for the official announcement. Now you know why RAINBOW was deployed to Las Vegas. This sort of rumor-mongering can be murder on the bookies before the confirmation/denial.

Dang, R.R., when you say you “send Sony fans’ heads spinning”, we don’t know whether to clap our hands or call an exorcist.