Submitted by: kirkland on Monday July 10th, 2006 at 02:02 PM EST

A senior figure at IBM claims that Sony's forthcoming PlayStation 3 console will be backwards compatible, playing virtually all of the games designed for Sony's first and second generation consoles.

In an interview, Tom Reeves, VP of semiconductor and technology services at IBM, said: "Sony is very concerned about quality and backward compatibility. They want to get this right. They tested game after game after game. When there were about 40 PlayStation 1 games that didn’t work properly, that didn’t pass their criteria for quality."

In comparison, the Xbox 360 can still only play a small number of original Xbox games - approximately 20 titles. While Nintendo's Wii will support all Gamecube games along with the ability to play previous Nintendo console games through a download service.

Source: Tech Digest