PlayStation 2 Timeline, From Launch to Present

Decaffeinated Jedi writes "GameSpy has posted a timeline charting the history Sony's PlayStation 2, the third part in a series previously covered on Slashdot that includes similar retrospectives for the Xbox and for GameCube. The timeline traces the PlayStation 2's history from its initial boom, through its period as 'a repository for bad sports games, giant robot games, and other disappointing releases,' and up to the console's revitalization by such games as Gran Turismo 3, Metal Gear Solid 2, Devil May Cry, and Grand Theft Auto III." How has the PlayStation 2 measured up to your expectations?

Comments

Incorrect number?

[Slashdot Insider]

Sony's weekly 100,000-unit shipments only further agitated the market. Though PlayStation 2 units were readily available in Japan, the console remained virtually sold out in the United States through March, 2001.

IIRC that number was eventually cut down to 50K/week before getting cut down even further to 25K/week. The massive 0.25um 300mm^2 chip in the blasted thing probably didn't help Sony meet shipment targets.

Re:Not that great.

[k_187]

Good point, but saying that the dreamcast and gamecube's specs were similar is just silly. The Dreamcast has a 200 mHz SH4 + PowerVR II graphics. The Gamecube has a 485 mHz PowerPC derivative (I believe its real similar to the 750 G3s that used to be in ibooks) + a custom designed Art-X (now Ati) chip. There's other differences in there, how sound is done, system ram make up etc. The gamecube is much more powerful than the dreamcast was. Although the Dreamcast did compete very well on graphics compared to the PS2. Its just that like you said, Sony's hype machine killed the non-hardcore gamer enthusiasm for the dreamcast, which happened to have the best launch ever at the time.

Re:More powerful? Ahem...

[bishiraver]

No, the emotion engine (made up of vector units and central processing unit) is seperate from the graphics synthesizer, which has a memory bandwidth of 48 gigabytes/sec. The Geforce3 (similar to the graphics chip in the xbox) has approximately 7.36 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Unlike what was said in another post, the PS2 -does- do trilinear filtering - Along with "Texture Mapping, Bump Mapping, Fogging, Alpha Blending, Bi-...Linear Filtering, MIPMAP, Anti-aliasing, and Multi-pass Rendering".

The problems, of course, are that the emotion engine and graphics synthesizer require a PhD in mathematics and computer science to be able to code for them, so their potential has barely been reached - even by Sony's own programmers.

Re:More powerful? Ahem...

[xero314]

This is where any programer or person with any technical knowledge begins to laugh. The Vector Units of the PS2 are not it's graphics engine. These units are general purpose vector units. Yes it is true that in typical game design one of the two VUs is dedicated for Graphics processing, this is not only not required nor is it always done.

There is a reason that more than one major US university has a project to use a PS2, or PS2 cluster, for scientific computing, and none have atempted this with an xbox (not sure about the game cube, which also has decent vector procssing) . The power and flexibility of the VUs is the reason why PS2 games have better AI and Physics (when comparing the best of console games, all systems have their crappy games). The fact that the VUs are not dedicated to graphics processing is why PS2 graphics are not what they could be, because most developers, especialy american developers, have never programed on such a system. But as I have said before Lazyness is no reason knock a system.

The real ignorance is shown with statements about the PS2s RAM bottle neck. If you ever looked at the arcitecture of the PS2 you will see it was built for high process Multimedia. It is capable of moving it's entire main memory store in a single cycle to any one of it's processing units. The key is keeping the pipeline full. Typical programing has been done by filling large memory stores, cache, and letting it tricle out to the processing units. Do your self a favor and research the technology before you try and talk about it.

Re:Grand Theft Auto?

[dhamsaic]

I think it's difficult to overstate the importance GTA3 had for the PS2. It came totally out of left field to take the world by storm. It reportedly sold over four million copies on pre-order alone and by the time Vice Ciy was announced in May 2002, GTA3 had sold over six million copies. That was about six months after the game launched, for an average of a million units a month.

I'm at work and can't look up all the numbers, but now that it's on the Greatest Hits line and thus has enjoyed the $30 price cut, I'm sure it's enjoying strong sales to this day.

I know at least half a dozen people that bought a PS2 just to play GTA3 - myself included. Sure, I bought other games later, but GTA3 is definitely a system mover.

Why do you think Sony was paying Rockstar/Take Two the big bucks to keep it off the Xbox? GTA is a great exclusive to have because it sells systems.

Again, it's extremely difficult to overstate the importance of GTA3 to the PS2.