i am thinking of buying a ps3 (though im not giving up pc gaming as im going to buy a new graphics card aswell) and just need to know wether it can play ps2 and ps1 games.

i am going to buy the 60gb uk version. i saw something on the internet about only 40 ps1 games dont work because if thats the case then ill definatly buy one (40's not that much) the main thing is if ps2 games work on it.

one of my freinds said that you need to download something on the ps3 to play them, is this true?
thanks for your time.

Yes I would suggest having an eithernet connection or an N1 wireless router ps3 will auto configure the settings for either but the hard wire is a much fast connection of course. You will have to download the backward compatiable software from the playstation store its free! (Thankyou Sony for keeping very much free unlike the competitors) You will also need to buy the mem card adapter ~15 dollars works on ps1 and ps2 mem cards. Iv`v also found that things like codebreaker and gameshark work on my 60gig ps3 but not on my 80gig ps3 . I`ve got to tell you these system 2 systems are awesome. My full library : 40 ps1 games, 70 ps2 games and of course 16 ps3 games all work on either 60gig or 80gig and alot of the ps1 and ps2 games look alot better. Serious gamer aka ICEMAN aka Ericsr.