Phil Harrison, President of Sony Corporation Entertainment Worldwide Studios has been copping a battering of late.  Most recently over the announcement that the PAL version of the PS3 will not have the close-to-full backwards compatibility with PS2 and PSone games originally promised. 

Put that on top of the lack of “rumble”, Price, quibbles over whether the console is selling well, just shipping badly or just sitting on shelves in the US and Japanese markets.

Like a punch drunk fighter, Harrison is lifting his battered body off the canvas and coming back flailing at his opponents.  Harrison acknowledges that Sony has made recent PR mistakes, and that it is willing to learn from these to provide a more open discussion on the technology road-map for PS3.

Harrison said; "There is a cultural thing about our approach in Japan that has to change. Our approach in Japan is, 'Once it's perfect, we'll share it with everybody else.' Whereas I think in order to engender trust in our users, we have to share some things that might be not quite perfect, but are ready to give you an indication of what's coming,"

An example of what he means, has raised not only eyebrows but expectations (oh-oh!) and questions about what exactly is meant; "So we could say, 'You know, we're not sure when it's coming, but we're going to have DVD upscaling on Playstation 3.' There you go. There's a scoop for you.”

Is this just an unfounded comment used as an example? Or an actual part of the Sony PS3 tech road-map?  Will it be achieved through a hardware or firmware update?