Slashdot Mirror
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. "
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?
They've shipping = They have shipping.
This is something that I always look for when placing an order online...
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.
Well, over the life of my PS1 I bought:
(4) controllers
(2) multi-taps
(4) memory cards
This doesn't include other hardware that shipped with the PS1, and it's probably a little above average (but 8-player FIFA was pretty fun).
Over the life of my PS2 (so far) I have bought:
(2) controllers
(3) memory cards
I didn't bother purchasing the hard drive or network adapter, and this is probably around average.
So, including the units themselves, and not including additional hardware shipped with the base units, I've purchased 17 pieces of Sony hardware... from Sony. This doesn't include the knockoff disposable controllers and cord extenders I bought and cannibalized after they broke.
So, 1.86bn pieces of hardware seems pretty darn attainable.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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...
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?
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...