PlayStation 2 Celebrates Seven Years in the US

GamesIndustry.biz notes that today marks the seventh anniversary of the PlayStation 2's US launch. Stats for the console's lifetime include more than 120 million hardware units sold, and more than a billion units of software sold, with 30 million of those sold this year alone. The article notes that Sony is committed to keeping the console alive for at least another three years, with another 160 titles due out for the system through March 2008. Here's the console's top sellers list: "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (13 million), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (12 million), Grand Theft Auto III (11 million), Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (11 million), Gran Turismo 4 (8.79 million), Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (7 million), Kingdom Hearts (5.6 million) Final Fantasy X (5 million), Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (3.7 million), Final Fantasy XII (3.68 million)."

Comments

Re:So sad.

[XaXXon]

But, surprisingly because so often it isn't the case, the best-selling games on the platform are all quality titles. I've played and enjoyed all of the titles mentioned. So often 'popular' and 'good' don't line up at all.

Odd

[MagusZeal]

"PlayStation 2 is a perfect example of our ten year product lifecycle promise and is a testament to the design and technology that continues to be at the core of the product. While today's anniversary celebrates PlayStation 2' past, we're very excited for its future." So given previous console hardware trends and how hard their pushing the PS3, does anyone else find this odd? It seems normal for the previous gen console to vanish after the new one's been out for a year or year and a half, just go looking for Xbox titles these days. Combine it with the insanity that's been the PS3 launch over the last year and it seems really odd to keep both up, especially when they've just gutted the backwards compatibility from the lower end PS3 models. It's almost like their not sure what they want to do at this point since most companies intentionally discontinue the older system to force an upgrade.

Re:Odd

[Applekid]

Personally, I think Sony's stated committment to 3 more years of PS2 is just them protecting their bottom flanks. Wii is the least costly console, but if you include PS2 in the group, now the PS2 is the least costly. DS is a fun system with fun games and backwards compatibility with lots of GBA games but PS2 has it's own set of fun games along with backwards compatibility lots of PSX games.

If you can't afford a PS3 (or don't find it compelling enough), they'd still much rather get your money than you hand it over to Microsoft or Nintendo.