Console gamers worldwide can once again reminisce about the early days of the PlayStation as Sony celebrates 30 years of play. From the launch of its first console, born out of interactions with Nintendo, to its current PS5 Pro, Sony has established itself as a major player in the console gaming ecosystem. Sony has now revealed that its PlayStation 2 has sold a record-setting 160 million units since its launch in 2000.
Many can remember the good times had with Sony’s first PlayStation which would undergo multiple model changes after its first release in 1994 but those early days of console designs saw manufacturers constantly endeavoring to one-up each other with new hardware improvements. While today’s consoles may truly resemble scaled-down PC hardware by using very similar parts, things were a bit different in the early 2000s when the PlayStation 2 launched.
The King is dead, long live the king
Its inclusion of a DVD player, a still somewhat new format of the time that went on to redefine home entertainment, became a major marketing point that no other competition had yet to adopt. The PS2’s processor named the Emotion Engine, took gaming to new levels with never-before-seen graphics on a console. Sony’s 2nd generation console, as impressive as it was, would have to duke it out with rivals Sega and Nintendo, with the Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 consoles respectively, and eventually Microsoft’s first Xbox, but it managed to stay relevant for well over a decade even as new generations of consoles would be launched.
Optical Issues
The PS2 not only featured backward compatibility for previous games but also allowed users to enhance some older titles with the newer hardware. While not always able to provide the best results it did provide another incentive for gamers to pick the newer console. It wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies for owners of the console as a common failure for optical media, namely the optical drive, would become its Achilles heel and Sony would end up settling a class action lawsuit in 2005 regarding “Disc Read Error” messages. While this phenomenon would be far from exclusive to the PS2 it was particularly troublesome for owners as they would be unable to play their favorite games or DVDs/CDs.
As Sony celebrates 30 years of play it can also be noted that the console manufacturer would launch different versions of each generation starting with the first PlayStation and continuing with its current PS5 Pro. The PlayStation 2 saw no less than three different models including the original (2000), Slim (2004), and Super Slim (2007). Sony would also expand upon the PS2’s diverse capabilities with a wide array of peripheral hardware. With over 4,000 games made for the PS2, many of which would go on to become established franchises still in production, it’s no wonder the console would manage such a feat of over 160 million units sold.
Discussion (4 replies)
Join Discussion →Hahahahaha a friend showed me this yesterday:
I've been using the PS1 boot-up sound as my PC boot/login sound since the late 90s or early 2000s, for every single main desktop PC I've ever had since then. On my laptop I use the Saturn boot-up sounds (Japanese one for Linux and USA one for Win10).
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What's my personal PS1 history? I got a PS1 in '97, the first system I bought with my own money (cuz at the time my mom, who was the one who got me into video games, was a Nintendo and Sega fan, and she didn't like Sony, so she was unwilling to buy me a PS1). It was not my first 5th-gen system though, as I had gotten an N64 at launch. I didn't have an original PS1 model, but one of the later revisions that still had a parallel I/O port in the back. I paid an import shop to hard-mod the system so I could play import and burned games. On that particular unit, the optical drive motor started failing. Sometimes I had to get the discs spinning by hand to get the motor started. The memory card port on that PS1 also started wigging out and failing. Sony wanted too much money to repair the PS1, so I ended up buying a newer revision, one that sadly didn't have the parallel I/O port in the back. If I had known I could have saved money and used an external Pro Action Replay in that port instead of paying a ton of money to get it hard-modded with a mod-chip for the same functionality, I would have gone that route.
Later I continued to use my PS2 to play PS1 games, but eventually moved to emulation (plus my PS2 no longer reads discs, and its memory card ports too are failing). Before DuckStation came along, I dabbled with other emulators, but the one I stuck with was Sony's PS1 emulator on PS3, which was actually very good. Now I only use DuckStation. It's first emulator I've used in my life that made me forget I was using emulation and tricked me into thinking I was using the real system.
Got my first PlayStation from GameStop back in the day after playing many games with my roommates on theirs. It was a refurbished 1st gen that was a tank and I couldn't tell you how many hours it got used. Eventually donated to Goodwill about 10 years ago. I sort of regret that but oh well.
Had several of the original PS2s that had the optical drive die, so frustrating and expensive. Gave one last try with the 2004 Slim model and it ended up being the winner, and thanks to its re-design featuring a DC-in jack I was able to use it in our old 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan with a portable DVD player that had IO ports, to play games while my wife was shopping. I knew early on from my A/V background to get rid of the original connectors and first used gold-plated S-Video with a Sony Trinitron (2nd to last model produced) and the picture quality was amazing. Years later got a component video connector and was able to play Bounty Hunter at 480p on our first flatscreen and then 1080i for GTA V-Spec and enjoyed digital audio with its optical out.
I never had the gigantic library of some of my friends (one with upwards of 100+) but had around a couple dozen games. It really was a special era for console gaming and I'll never forget the excitement in seeing what titles were in stock at the many stores that carried them back then nor the fun of those multiplayer games like Gauntlet on N64 (my roommate had this plus the mem expansion pack) which resulted in weekend-long binges among a group of friends.
While I appreciate what current-gen consoles can do I don't feel the magic of what was experienced back then. For Sony, the PS 1-3 were all amazing and unique in what they offered. If you bought from a different manufacturer, for better or worse, you could expect a different gaming experience and look of games. Sega and Nintendo already had their history of numerous historical predecessors, and let's not forget Neo Geo and a few others. As amazing as PC gaming was in the late 90s and early 2000s, there was a huge amount of innovation happening in the console market that will probably never happen again. These days there seems to be more happening with gaming handhelds than consoles and although that's cool, still not quite the same.
I remember bringing home my first Playstation. Got Doom and Destruction Derby and had a blast.
Yeah. 7th-gen was the last gen I was heavily involved with. After that, the console market became very "meh". My favorite gens are 4 and also 3 and 6. But 5th-gen was when 3D graphics blew up and the industry moved to 3D en masse, and those were some very interesting and exciting times indeed.