25 years of PlayStation 2. Remembering the most successful console in history and its games

On March 4, 2000, sales of PlayStation 2, Sony's second console, started. The company not only repeated the success of PS1, but surpassed it and again proved to be more successful than all competitors. We will tell you why this happened, as well as about the iconic games for the second PlayStation, in this article.

The end of the 90s and the first half of the 2000s turned out to be a very interesting time for console manufacturers. If 10 years before that, the positions of Sega and Nintendo seemed strong, then in the sixth generation, both Japanese giants collapsed. The big N had the resources to continue the console wars, and already in 2006 it released the extremely successful Wii. But Sega, after the failure of the Dreamcast, did not find the means to continue the business and left the hardware market. The company still exists, but exclusively as a publisher of video games.

At the same time, Microsoft released its console. And although the sales of the first Xbox were not impressive, it became clear that the American corporation was seriously engaged in this segment of the gaming industry. The Xbox 360 will be released in the next generation, which will prove to be a serious competitor to the PS3.

And then, in the early 2000s, Sony won the console race by a wide margin. 160 million PlayStation 2s were sold. This result has not been surpassed to this day. For comparison: the original Xbox sold 24 million units, the Nintendo GameCube — 21.7 million, and the Sega Dreamcast — only 9.13 million.

The first PlayStation was positioned as an audio player In the case of the PS2, Sony went even further and offered a device that combines a CD player and a DVD player. At that time, there was an active transition from video cassettes to disks. PlayStation 2 replaced a full-fledged media center for many people, because it could be used to watch movies in high quality. And the price of $300 at the start of sales seemed small. Moreover, by 2004 it had fallen by half.

It is also worth noting that, thanks to backward compatibility, you can play projects from the PS1 on the new console. Today this is the industry standard, but back then, Dreamcast did not have such a feature, and the GameCube could only run simple games from the portable Game Boy.

But the main reason to buy PlayStation 2 is its excellent games. Among them were multiplatform, ports from Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo GameCube and PC, as well as projects that were developed specifically for this console.

Now Sony offers temporary exclusives that first appear on PS5, and a year and a half later come out on PC. Curiously, a similar approach was used two decades ago. GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas were released on PlayStation 2, and about six months later — on personal computers. This period was enough to sell millions of PS2 versions of the early parts of the Grand Theft Auto series. And San Andreas still remains the most successful game for this console.

Also on PlayStation 2 were released the first parts of the iconic slasher series — Devil May Cry and God of War. The games turned out to be completely different, because each team of developers had its own vision of the genre.

Horror games weren't as popular in the 2000s as they were in the 90s, but the PS2 saw the release of the second and third Silent Hill, the Forbidden Siren dilogy, the Rule of Rose trilogy, and the Fatal Frame trilogy. Each of these games is still scary today.

When it comes to the best part of Metal Gear Solid, many fans name the threequel with the subtitle Snake Eater. It was originally released on PlayStation 2, and then ported to other platforms. It is this project that will receive a full-fledged remake on August 28, 2025. Also on PS2 was the controversial MGS 2: Sons of Liberty. In thosetimes the series was personally handled by Hideo Kojima.

It would take a long time to list the first-class projects for Sony's second console. We would also like to highlight the third and the fourth Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy 10, Tekken 5, as well as Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.

The production of PS2 continued until January 2013. Moreover, new games were released for it at the same time. These were new parts of sports series in the spirit of FIFA, as well as some multiplatform, for example, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

However, the demand for PlayStation 2 played a cruel joke on Sony. Despite the release of PS3, the company continued to pay a lot of attention to the old console at the expense of the new one. The lack of first-class exclusives and complex architecture led to the fact that users more often chose Xbox 360, especially at the early stage of the seventh generation. The situation began to change after 2009 with the release of Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain and God of War 3.

Today, there are many ways to run games from the PS2. In our opinion, none of them can replace the feeling of working with the original hardware. However, there may be difficulties in finding the right TV and memory cards for saving.

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Did you live in the era of the PlayStation 2? Perhaps you still have this console? Share your stories in the comments!