The electronics firm said that PS3 consoles built for the European market are slightly different to those in other regions because they use software to carry out some of the functions of the dedicated chips.
Japanese and US PlayStation 3 models play 98 percent of Sony's previous games.
"Rather than concentrate on PS2 backwards compatibility, company resources will be increasingly focused on developing new games and entertainment features exclusively for PS3," said a statement by Sony Computer Entertainment.
The news is a further blow to European gamers, who will not get their hands on the games console until 23 March, four months after the North America and Japanese launches.
Sony expects to have around one million units available at the European launch.
Sydney Cloud & Datacenter Convention 2026
iTnews Executive Retreat - Security Leaders Edition
Can Testing Keep Up? Quality in the Age of Accelerating Delivery
iTnews Resilience, Rewired Breakfast
RIMPA Live Convention 2026



