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100 Million PS2s Shipped
1up.com reports on a Sony release stating they've shipped 100 Million PS2 consoles. From the article: "PSOne took more than nine years to reach the same milestone Sony's achieved with PlayStation 2 in a little more than five. Sony says global shipments of PlayStation 2 break down to 40.65 million units in North America, 37.14 million in Europe and 22.22 million in all of Asia. The end result is Sony having a PlayStation brand that's moved roughly 1.86 billion units of hardware in a little over a decade, with plenty of time for PlayStation 2 to keep growing as the company makes the shift into next-generation in the coming year. "
It really is pretty astonishing to ship 100 million *anything* let alone a game console. It sure makes that trumped up 10 million Xbox 360's by 2006 statement look like a long shot.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I'm sure it's a lot what with their market-leading position, but after the PSP discrepency between units-shipped and units-sold, I think it's a valid question.
And, 1.86 BILLION pieces of hardware? How many of those are consoles, and how many are things like memory cards?
How can they add 100m PS2's to date, and 100m PS1's (in 9 years), and end up with 1.8b units total? They'd have to have enough PS1's in the last year and PSP's in total to add up to 1.6b!
I can shit in a box,
and ship 100 million of them too,
But all I've shipped is a box full of shit.
That's 1.86bn items of software, not hardware. Quick envelope-maths goes pretty hard on the idea of having that much hardware, even if you include the PS units themselves.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
Didn't you hear in the office over one?
I mean, I know we don't ask for much, but it's actually highlighted as a link. Even accounting for the short attention span, it's the very first sentence of the blurb! How does this get by?
Okay, so you've got approximately 200 million PS1 and PS2s out there. Does that mean that every one of those has approximately 10 other pieces of hardware that goes with it?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
I want to know how many of those units sold were replacements for the shitty first generation ones that died on people! I've had 3 PS1 consoles and also 2 PS2 consoles. Crappy lasers make crappy console parts.
And thanks to Sony's faulty optics used in the PS2
at least three of the 100-million are mine!
(Only one, the redesigned PStwo, still works...for now)
Just makes me wonder how many of those 100 million have been sent in for repair/refurb...
..."There's a sucker born every minute."
Anyway, a key point here is ( or should be ) that there have been 1.86 *billion* Sony Playstation game disks sold. If the PS3 is backwards-compatible, that's a lot of people who have a lot of games they can *already* play on that system.
Another key point is that the PS2 is going to continue to be sold for some time, and is easily the most successful console of all time, selling 100 million in 5 years and still going strong. I know people who will be getting thier *first* PS2 this Christmas, and believe me, they aren't thinking of it as a console near the end of it's life. I expect the PSone to be phased out sometime after the introduction of the PS3, but the PS2 is going to be around for a while yet.
For comparrison to other more important and trendy questions of the day - does the XBox360 support Blast-Processing?
Depends on whether a Sonic the Hedgehog classics compilation is one of the backward-compatible titles. In practice, if the name "Blast Processing" referred to anything, it was the name of the graphics engine in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. This engine used a lot of caching of objects to fixed parts of the Sega Genesis console's main RAM to take advantage of the fastest MC68000 addressing modes, something that modern consoles and their malloc() based memory management can't do as effectively. Anything that can emulate a Genesis can run Sonic 2 and any other hypothetical Genesis game that uses the same engine.
And how many of the consoles sold are replacement consoles for the ones that broke?
Yeah, that's the sound of a joke doing a high-speed flyby over your head.
It's possible to lose a lot more karma by making bad jokes (1 Funny + 1 Overrated = -2% karma times the number of pairs of moderats who feel this way) than by intentionally missing a joke and making a sincere comment (1 In* + 1 Overrated = 0 effect on karma).
2/3rds of those systems were purchased by people whose PS2 died on them once or twice.
I've purchased several (more than 2) and so have most of my friends.
I love my PS2. I'm actually on my second one - not because my first one died, but because I bought the PS2 slimline and gave my first one to a friend. It's all about the games. I've played games on the XBox (including a few that supported 1080i on my HD-TV) but they're too much like games on the PC. There's more variety and unique games on the PS2.
Can't wait to play "We Love Katamari", or "Shadow of the Colossus" or even "Ratchet: Deadlocked". Last weekend, I went to our local GameStop and picked up some used games to get me through until Christmas. Right now, I'm playing "Maximo" and "Killzone".
The irony (for me) in Sony shipping the 100 millionth PS2 is that last weekend I also bought a PSOne for $20. I'll use it to set up a dedicated "Dance Dance Revolution" system, so I can get some exercise during the winter.
That should read "1.86 billion units of software"
-- Contradictions only exist in thought - not in reality.
While I'd love a console that would last at least 5 years, the PS2 model is making me think they won't try that hard next go-round.
Why sell something once to someone when you can sell it over and over (also see: music CDs)?
Actually, I think that is one of many reasons Sony-BMG (et al) hate the digital media (yes, I know CDs are technically digital media) -- it doesn't scratch and never has to be replaced. Not much money in that.
That being said, MS is doing a great job peeing in their pie. By shortening the console generation, MS is basically robbing Sony of profit. Since Sony has such an enormous lead this time, anything to shake them off balance is good for MS.
The other thing MS is doing right is the Live Marketplace. Everyone (I know) who has seen it has fallen in love with it. People will be spending money like crazy, 5 bucks at a time.
Back to Geometry Wars...
That's really all you have to read.