Sony PlayStation 2

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After the enormous success of the PlayStation, Sony were not going to rest on their laurels, despite its rival Sega launching their Dreamcast a more than a year early than Sony would unleash the PlayStation 2, their marketing gurus would be able to hold onto the vast user base of the original by releasing exaggerated specs for the new machine, while promising full backwards compatibility in both hardware and software, the real attraction of the PS2 was a built in DVD player, which was a very strong draw, as people could now play games, with the added bonus of joining the new digital film age.

When the console finally launched throughout the world in 2000, it was a massive success, selling close to one million units in Japan alone.

The success would have been greater, but the console was difficult to manufacture, and soon Sony ran into supply problems, when the machine came to launch in the UK, only 80,000 units were available, these were snapped up immediately, so for the first few weeks, only software and peripherals were available, also manufacturing faults had crept in, with a good few consoles blowing a fuse after only a short amount of use.

Despite these early problems, the machine became the highest selling console ever, reaching 100 million units by November 2005, and eventually passing 155 million in 2011.

3,874 software titles were released for the console, combined sales of those were a staggering 1.5 billion copies.

Despite being the technically weaker of its two rivals, the Gamecube and Xbox, the PlayStation 2 continued to dominate the market due to adept exclusive deals, and almost total third party support, well after its successor, PlayStation 3 which was launched in 2006.

Manufacturer: Sony Corporation
Date: 2000

Other Systems Related To Sony PlayStation 2:

Item Manufacturer Date
Sony PalmTop PTC-500 Sony Corporation 1990
Sony Magic Link PIC-1000 Sony Corporation 1994
Sony Vaio PCV-6603 All-in-one PC Sony Corporation 1996
Sony Vaio PCG-FX201 Sony Corporation 1998
Sony Vaio PCG-C1F Sony Corporation 1999
Sony Vaio PCG-FX109K Sony Corporation 1999
Sony Vaio PCG-U1 Sony Corporation 2002

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH4597. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

 
Sony PlayStation 2

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