Sony buggin' out!
BY ADAM PLAYFORD and BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Red-faced Sony bosses announced yesterday that their prized PlayStation 3 is a plagued-station.
Just days from the U.S. debut of its mega-hyped video game, legions of fans were peeved that the updated console won't play some old games.
The announcement comes after Sony spent months boasting that first- and second-generation PlayStation titles would be compatible with the latest version set to be released in the United States on Friday.
"We are sorry for the game fans that they cannot play all games. But unfortunately some of these problems could not be avoided," said Sony spokesman Satoshi Fukuoka.
PS3 was released in Japan on Saturday and complaints soon followed.
The popular war game "Final Fantasy XI" is among those that don't work on the new 60gigabyte machine. The glitches are also muffling the background music to the "Tekken 5" combat game. And the virtual gun on "Biohazard" won't fire.
The problems are causing Sony to eat crow after it blasted rival Microsoft's XBox 360 last year for having similar compatibility problems.
"The big deal is they [Sony] claimed it would be fully backwards compatible and now they're running into problems," said Tim Surette, news editor of the San Francisco-based gaming magazine Gamespot. "I'm sure Microsoft is smiling."
About 200 of the 8,000 old games are affected by the glitches in the new $600 system.
Gaming fans already lining up outside the Circuit City in Union Square for PS3's release at 12:01 a.m. Friday said they'll just hold on to their old consoles to play the old games.
Rutgers University student Tamba Peters, 21, was more worried about getting his hands on one of the new PlayStations than coping with its bugs.
"The PS3's going to be my second girlfriend," said Peters, as his girlfriend, Katherine Poff, 20, rolled her eyes.
