The Sony PlayStation 2 was the successor to the original PlayStation, and was launched in 2000, five years after the original PlayStation was released.

After the enormous success of the PlayStation, Sony were not going to rest on their laurels. Despite its rival Sega launching the Dreamcast more than a year before 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

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH59040. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.