PS2 songs in PS3 SingStar clarified

By Tom Bramwell Published 21 August, 2008

Won't involve ripping to hard disk.

MTV Multiplayer has clarified that the SingStar disc-swapping feature announced by Sony Europe boss David Reeves last night won't allow you to rip songs to the hard disk.

Reeves had said that a firmware update would allow you to use songs from the PS2 disc in the PS3 version, prompting speculation about how this would work.

What he meant was that by pressing Select on the carousel you'll be able to insert a PS2 SingStar disc and use those songs without exiting the software.

Most importantly, you won't need one of the increasingly rare backwards-compatible PS3s, either, because the firmware Reeves referred to will solve the problem of how to get the PS3 to talk to the old discs.

Elsewhere during the conference, Sony unveiled SingStar Vol. 3 featuring the likes of Barry Manilow and Michael Jackson, as well as SingStar Singalong With Disney and SingStar Queen for PS2, and pair of downloadable five-song Queen track packs for SingStar, due to cost EUR 6.99 apiece later this year.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Zomoniac #1 4 years ago

    You could do that with slimline PS2s. I only discovered it by accident. It was brilliant.

  • SeesThroughAll #2 4 years ago

    F*** you.

    I didn't buy a PS3 Singstar yet due to: 1) No ripping PS2 discs to HDD 2) No wireless mics.

    And guess what? Nothing changed!

  • Les #3 4 years ago

    all i want to know is when (if?) the wireless mics arrive... :(

  • Doctor_What #4 4 years ago

    Boo! We wanted to rip the songs to our harddrive. Changing discs... Not very next-gen really, is it?

  • MavSkipper #5 4 years ago

    "Most importantly, you won't need one of the increasingly rare backwards-compatible PS3s, either, because the firmware Reeves referred to will solve the problem of how to get the PS3 to talk to the old discs."

    Now I'm more looking forward to that specific firmware.

  • Widge #6 4 years ago

    Paranoid fear of someone figuring out how to exploit copying PS2 games to hdd?

  • Zomoniac #7 4 years ago

    Now I'm more looking forward to that specific firmware.

    Why? I'm sure all it will do is make the Singstar song files visible to the game engine. It's not going to magically add BC or anything.

  • trav #8 4 years ago

    I'm more interested in the fact that a firmware update can get a PS3 to talk to a PS2 disc again.

    Surely this would suggest that downloadable backwards compatibility could happen?

  • SeesThroughAll #9 4 years ago

    Recognizing a disc and reading it does not equate playing games by any stretch of imagination.

    This will be just Singstar specific, nothing more.

  • Raz76 #10 4 years ago

    is this the 'next gen' Singstar that Reeves talked about at E3?

    http://ww w.eurogamer.net/article.php?art...

  • SeesThroughAll #11 4 years ago

    Yep

    :D

  • LeeroyJenkins #12 4 years ago

    I think the reason they aren't allowing ripping to HDD's is obvious.

    You could simply rent the PS2 games, rip them and you'd get all the songs for cheap. Or borrow them from a mate. Sony want to make sure you own the copy and have paid the full price for them. Seems logical for them, but the legitimate end-user suffers from having to swap discs - but it does go some way to making sure people own the disc in the first place.

  • tonynibbles #13 4 years ago

    What the fuck is problem with people?!

    SingStar PS3 doesn't allow for the ripping of songs to the hard drive from the disc, so why the hell should it do it for PS2 discs?

    That's the last thing I'd want anyway, I've enough downloaded content already and my 120Gb HDD is pretty much full. Are you people really too fucking lazy to change the discs?
    This is a great new feature, I can't believe people can see it in a negative way.

  • Doctor_What #14 4 years ago

    It's not a new feature though, is it? We've always been able to change discs to play old SingStar games. The only difference is that we can now do it in the shiny PS3 frontend. I love the SingStar games, but it's about time they caught up with the desires of the players. Wen want to be able to browse all the songs we own on one machine without having to view them in disc-sized chunks.

  • sickpuppysoftware #15 4 years ago

    Are you people really too fucking lazy to change the discs?
    Yes (of sorts)
    When there's a gang of friends round they all like different songs. These songs may be on lots of different discs. I don;t mind swapping at the start but I'm not getting up every 2 minutes because one person wants a song off disc 1 and then somebody wants a song off disc 2 then 3 then back to 1 etc.

    I don't mind so much paying for some of the songs again to get the downloaded version but as far as I can tell a lot of them aren't even there.

  • consignia #16 4 years ago

    TRWTF is that a firmware upgrade is required at all to read data off a PS2 disc. Unless I'm hideously mistaken, isn't a PS2 disc just a normal DVD?

  • kangarootoo #17 4 years ago

    @MavSkipper

    "Now I'm more looking forward to that specific firmware."

    I am guessing that the firmware won't let you run applications from PS2 discs, but just read the content. Actually running PS2 games on a PS3 requires more than the ability to read the data from PS2 discs.

    Edit: Oops. 16 people have already written what I have written.

    @consignia

    I believe that although the media is just DVD, the format of the files written to it are PS2 specific.
    Edited by 1 at 21/08/08 @ 12:53

  • kangarootoo #18 4 years ago

    I've got to say, I'm also surprised at some of the nagativity here. So you have to get off your arse every so often. Big deal. That is how it always was with the PS2 anyway, but now you can run everything off the same system.

    Seems some people will complain just because they got the wrong flavour of "free stuff".

  • Widge #19 4 years ago

    Apparently people prefer changing discs rather than installs... or so I read on here.

  • kangarootoo #20 4 years ago

    Its not a matter of first preference, its a matter of taking something that is free and being happy about it, even if its not fulfilling your wildest hopes and dreams.

  • jamespo #21 4 years ago

    calm down tonynibbles... hardly worth getting all pottymouthed about is it?

  • chaosinthesnow #22 4 years ago

    Does anyone know what the deal is with the software bc on the 60gb PS3s? Is the emulation software stored on the hard disk? My 60gb PS3 died the other day from the flashing red light of death and I'm wondering if I put my hard disk into a new PS3 will I still have backwards compatibility. Since it's software based instead of hardware based I thought that might be a possibility, even if it is a complete long shot.

  • SeesThroughAll #23 4 years ago

    Does anyone know what the deal is with the software bc on the 60gb PS3s? Is the emulation software stored on the hard disk? My 60gb PS3 died the other day from the flashing red light of death and I'm wondering if I put my hard disk into a new PS3 will I still have backwards compatibility. Since it's software based instead of hardware based I thought that might be a possibility, even if it is a complete long shot.

    First things first: Old 60GB PS3s still had a PS2 GPU onboard, so the emulation was split between hardware and software, with the Cell doing the EE and a GS sitting there just for PS2 graphics (which is, I suspect, why the upscaling was possible later on since the RSX was free to do it).

    The entire emulator code is part of the firmware, so removing the HDD won't remove the emulator.

  • layleeloo #24 3 years ago

    Tonynibbles

    I strongly agree with you!!! Someone at the top says "swapping discs - its not very next gen is it". For crying out loud do you want everything in your lap. So you have to walk across the living room every so often, so what. I'd rather have 50 discs to swap than put anything else on the limited hard drive as it is.

    Like may - how anyone can be negative anout things like this baffles me. If I was Sony at times I'd just tell everyone to go fuck themselves as they cant do right for wrong half the time. Im personally chuffed about it. I have 12 Singstar PS2 discs - well, their my girlfriends not surprisingly but even still - this is a great thing.