Hardware · 2000 – 2013
The best-selling home console in history by a wide margin, the PlayStation 2 sold around 160 million units across a thirteen-year commercial life — nearly triple the combined sales of its entire generation of rivals.
The PlayStation 2 launched in 2000 and remained in production until 2013, an extraordinary thirteen-year run, and it stands as the best-selling video game console ever made. For many years the widely reported figure was 155 million units, the number Sony last confirmed as of 31 March 2012, after which the company stopped updating its sales reporting. Sony has since clarified that the true lifetime total is approximately 160 million units — a revision of roughly five million that only widened an already commanding lead. The scale of that dominance is best appreciated in context: the PS2 sold nearly triple the combined total of every competing sixth-generation console. The Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft's original Xbox, and Sega's Dreamcast together could not approach it, and no console before or since has established such total control of its generation. Sony did not merely win the sixth generation; it effectively owned it. Several factors compounded into that result. The PS2 launched early, ahead of its rivals, and arrived with the priceless advantage of backward compatibility with the original PlayStation's enormous games library — a decision that let early adopters bring their existing collections with them. Its built-in DVD player was, in 2000, a genuinely compelling proposition in its own right, since standalone DVD players still cost more than the console did; many households bought a PS2 as much for films as for games. And its thirteen-year lifespan meant it continued selling in developing markets long after the next generation had begun elsewhere. Above all it had the software. The PS2's library is among the deepest of any platform ever assembled, running from Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels through Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, Final Fantasy X, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War, and thousands more. That combination of ubiquity, longevity, and catalogue depth made the PS2 the default gaming platform of its era and set a hardware sales record that has stood for over two decades.