The European version of the console will not feature a special "Emotion" chip (that's in the American and Japanese versions of the console). This chip will offer games a significantly high degree of compatibility with the legacy games.

The website managed to get hold of one of the European consoles prior to its launch on the 23rd March and tested the following games. 

The site found that only one game, Eragon, started up correct. The others refused to play and told users to wait for updates to the software that emulates the old console.

One gamer wrote on a forum that they were furious with the decision to go for a cheaper solution that could leave them with console games no better than expensive paperweights. 

"Here we go again. Time to rip off Europe. I just hope that most kids and their parents don't fall for this blatant extortion on the part of Sony and stick with their PS2s or go Xbox unless Sony offer the same features for Europe as the US," one said. 

But Sony's Phil Harrison told the media that his company has a strategy in place. He told games industry mag gamesindustry.biz that the company is still working to ensure that every PS2 and PSone game is compatible with the new console and that strategy had not changed.

"We have made a technical change to the machine which moves us from being a hardware-embedded backwards compatibility solution to one which is a combination of hardware and software," said Harrison.