Yeah that's purely retarded.
If the new chip handles the graphics exactly like the emotion engine did, and I'm sure the PS3 can handle emulating the computational portion of the emulation with no problems, then what the fuck is crippled about it? Shit, it might actually improve performance.
And with the new unit, they will be able to upscale ps2 games and make them downloadable.exactly, they eliminated the emotion engine chip and will be emulating it with one of the 6 SPEs
backwards compatibility wont be affected