PS3 to get new versions of classic arcade games

John Hight, director of external development at Sony's Santa Monica studio, has confirmed that PlayStation 3 owners will be able to download remakes of classic titles - just as Xbox 360 owners can currently do with Xbox Live Arcade.

Speaking to Firing Squad about the new service, dubbed "e-Distribution Initiative", Hight said, "Sony's third party publishers will undoubtedly provide updated versions of classic arcade games."

He also said that - unlike with Live Arcade - Sony won't confine developers to producing games that don't take up more than 50MB of storage space.

"We've arbitrarily set a limit of 500MB to keep download times reasonable," he admitted. "[But] Since we've got plenty of HD space we can accommodate even bigger games and a lot of them."

The PS3 Store already offers games which exceed the Live Arcade-standard 50MB limit, such as Blast Factor and Cash Guns Chaos.

But while Sony's console may have hard disk depth on its side, its interface could be lacking. Live Arcade can sort downloaded items into categories, launch games automatically, and allow for background and automatic downloading - while the PS3 simply presents the user with a long list of downloaded games and demos in the Cross Media bar.

With several firmware updates likely before PS3 launches in Europe next March, it'll be interesting to see what shape the respective services are in when the first PAL units hit the shops.