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62 milestones · 1999 to today · 155 million sold
Thirteen years of production, one announcement, three launches, a Slim, a camera, a guitar — and the biggest game library ever assembled. Filter by category, search anything, or jump straight to a year.InteractivePlayStation 2
62 milestones · 1999 → today
At a PlayStation Meeting in Tokyo, Ken Kutaragi unveils the PS2: the Emotion Engine CPU, the Graphics Synthesizer, DVD playback and full PlayStation backward compatibility. Sony's 'Toy Story in real time' claims are hype — but not by much. The Emotion Engine is rumoured to be so powerful it briefly lands the console on Japanese export-control lists over fears it could guide missiles.
The PS2 makes its playable debut at the autumn Tokyo Game Show. Crowds queue for hours to try early builds of Tekken Tag Tournament and Ridge Racer V — the first real look at what 'Emotion Engine' games actually look like.
The PS2 launches in Japan at ¥39,800 and sells roughly 980,000 units in its first weekend. Only about ten games are ready — Ridge Racer V, Street Fighter EX3, Kessen and DrumMania among them — but the console doubles as the cheapest DVD player on the market, which is what truly sells it. These first SCPH-10000 units ship the DVD player software on a memory card utility disc and use a PCMCIA slot instead of the later expansion bay.
Every PS2 ships with the DualShock 2 — outwardly the PS1 pad, inwardly something new: 256 levels of analog pressure sensitivity on every face button, shoulder button and D-pad direction. Games from Metal Gear Solid 2 to Gran Turismo 4 quietly build mechanics around it.
Sony confirms the PS2 passed a million units in Japan faster than any console in history — and it's still supply-constrained. The momentum is unprecedented for a machine with barely a dozen games.
The first hardware revision drops the memory card DVD driver — playback software now lives in the console's ROM — and swaps the PCMCIA slot for the expansion bay that will later take the Network Adaptor and HDD.
The PS2 hits the US at $299 with around 28 launch games — SSX, Madden NFL 2001, TimeSplitters, DOA2: Hardcore, Tekken Tag Tournament. Sony can only supply about 500,000 consoles against demand for millions; pre-orders sold out months earlier and scalpers list units at $1,000+. It remains one of the most supply-constrained console launches ever.
Europe gets the PS2 a month after America — £299/€399, a price grumble that never goes away — and still shifts over half a million units in weeks. Australia follows on 30 November at AU$749.
Within months of launch the PS2 is the best-selling DVD player in several markets. In living rooms that would never buy a 'games console', Sony now has a beachhead — the exact playbook it will reuse with Blu-ray on the PS3.
Square's first PS2 Final Fantasy launches in Japan — fully voice-acted, lavishly produced and a million-seller on day one in its home market. It reaches the US in December and Europe in May 2002, and remains one of the system's essential games.
Polyphony's first PS2 racer is the console's first true system-seller — 140+ cars, rain, rallying and visuals critics struggle to believe are real-time. It sells roughly 15 million copies and stays the best-selling PS2 game of all time.
Two of the medium's defining works arrive within weeks: Team Silent's psychological horror masterpiece and Fumito Ueda's minimalist castle escape. Neither sells like a blockbuster; both permanently expand what games are allowed to be.
DMA Design moves GTA into 3D and invents the modern open-world game. Liberty City's living city, radio stations and go-anywhere freedom are a generational leap — 14.5 million sales, endless imitators, and the moment the PS2 becomes unstoppable.
Resident Evil's mutated combat prototype becomes Capcom's stylish action landmark — Dante, juggling, ranking screens and all. It single-handedly creates the 'character action' genre.
THPS3 quietly becomes the first PS2 game you can play online, using a USB ethernet adapter on launch-era consoles. A niche feature now — it previews the online era the Network Adaptor will open a year later.
Kojima's biggest production yet ships with the most famous bait-and-switch in gaming — the trailers star Snake, the game stars Raiden. Underneath the controversy: astonishing AI, physics and set-pieces, and a plot that reads like prophecy for the internet age.
Sony closes 2001 with roughly 20 million PS2s shipped worldwide. In its first full calendar year the console has GTA III, MGS2, GT3, FFX, DMC and Silent Hill 2 — arguably the strongest single-year library ever assembled.
Sony drops the PS2 to $199 in the US at E3 — a cut that puts it below the GameCube and incoming Xbox on price while its library gap keeps widening. PS2 Linux also ships this month: an official kit turning the console into a cheap Linux workstation.
Square launches FFXI on PS2 in Japan — a full, subscription MMO running on a games console, years before that was normal. It needs the hard drive expansion, making it the HDD's killer app and eventually the only game that truly requires it.
Sony's $40 expansion bay add-on brings ethernet and 56k modem to the fat PS2 — plus a 40GB hard drive bay underneath. Launch copies bundle Twisted Metal: Black Online free. The PS2 goes online properly: no subscription, no central service, just games.
Zipper's squad shooter becomes the face of PS2 online: a bundled headset, voice command in single-player, and the first console community that feels like Xbox Live's rival. SOCOM II a year later draws over 60,000 players a night.
Rockstar's neon-drenched 1986 sequel sells a million copies in days — then the fastest-selling entertainment product in history. The soundtrack alone becomes a cultural artefact.
Two new Sony-side franchises are born within weeks: Square and Disney's impossible crossover RPG, and Insomniac's gadget-platformer. Both become generational series still running today.
The PS2 passes 50 million units in under three years — the pace no console has ever matched. By now it owns roughly three quarters of the home console market.
Sony's little USB camera launches in Europe with EyeToy: Play, and controller-free gaming arrives a full three years before the Wii. Wave at the screen, wipe windows, kung-fu ninjas — it goes on to sell over 10 million units and directly inspires PlayStation Eye and Kinect.
The final fat revision fixes the early model's rough edges: a quieter laser mechanism, progressive-scan DVD playback, a built-in IR receiver for the remote — and, tellingly, the i.LINK port quietly disappears. Inside, the groundwork is being laid for something much smaller.
EA's neon tuner racer taps straight into the Fast and Furious era and becomes a phenomenon — 15 million copies and the rebirth of the Need for Speed series.
The PS2's online peak: SOCOM II regularly pulls tens of thousands of simultaneous players — console online gaming's biggest community outside Xbox Live, on a free, decentralised network.
Final Fantasy XI finally launches on PS2 in North America bundled with the hard drive it requires — the only game that ever truly needs the HDD. Japan had the PS2 BB Pack a year earlier. It runs until 2016: fourteen years on console hardware.
London Studio's USB microphones and pitch-scoring engine launch in Europe and quietly start one of Sony's biggest party franchises — dozens of discs, tens of millions of sales, and a format that outlives the console itself.
Criterion perfects the arcade racer: crash mode, takedowns, aftertouch and 200mph frame rates. Frequently cited as the best racing game on the system — and arguably the best ever made.
Three cities, one state, a jetpack and a country-western radio station. San Andreas is the PS2's biggest game in every sense — 17+ million sales, the era's defining blockbuster and still the reference point for open-world scope.
Four years on, Sony rebuilds the PS2 into a book-sized 900g slab: top-loading lid, built-in Ethernet, near-silent operation, $149. It gives up the hard drive bay — but outsells everything anyway and stays in production until 2013.
Kojima's Cold War masterpiece — jungle survival, camo systems and the ladder — arrives alongside Guerrilla's 'Halo killer' that isn't. One is remembered as an all-timer; the other starts a franchise that runs for a decade.
The Slim launches into immediate scarcity: Sony can't build them fast enough and shelves are bare through the holidays. Four years into its life the PS2 is still the must-have machine.
Santa Monica Studio's Greek-myth bloodbath sets a new bar for cinematic action: Kratos, the Blades of Chaos, Hydra intro, Colossus of Rhodes finale. The PS2 gets the exclusive franchise it will ride to the end of the generation.
700+ cars, Nürburgring, photo mode, B-Spec director mode — Polyphony's magnum opus is a technical flex so absolute it still looks respectable today. Nearly 12 million sales.
Team ICO's second game is sixteen boss fights and nothing else — a mournful masterpiece that becomes the permanent exhibit in every 'games as art' argument for the next twenty years.
Capcom's GameCube masterpiece gets a PS2 port with bonus content — Ada's Separate Ways campaign — and instantly becomes one of the best games on the system. Over-the-shoulder shooting changes third-person games forever.
Four fat red buzzers plug into USB and turn the PS2 into a family game show. Relentless's Buzz! becomes a European institution: two dozen versions, ten million buzzers, and the console's second great party weapon after SingStar.
Harmonix's riff on GuitarFreaks ships with the little SG guitar and detonates: everyone who plays it buys one. Guitar Hero II follows within a year, and the franchise alone becomes a billion-dollar business born on PS2.
Sony confirms the PS2 passed 100 million shipped — in five years and nine months, faster than any games machine before it. The PS1 needed nine and a half years for the same number.
Level-5's cel-shaded epic brings Dragon Quest West in style — the series' biggest international success yet and proof the PS2's RPG bench is the deepest ever assembled on one console.
Square's last PS2 Final Fantasy — gambit systems, real-time battles, the political intrigue of Ivalice — divides fans at launch and is now widely ranked among the best JRPGs ever made.
The PS2 drops to $129.99 in the US — deep into impulse-buy territory, still outselling the brand-new Xbox 360 in some months. There are still seven years of production left.
Clover Studio's sumi-e masterpiece — Amaterasu the wolf goddess, the Celestial Brush, a feudal Japan painted in ink — sells modestly and is canonised by critics. One of the system's most beautiful games, full stop.
Rockstar's boarding-school sandbox arrives trailing manufactured outrage — and turns out to be a witty, surprisingly gentle satire. The last great new franchise of the PS2 era.
Sony's $599 successor launches to supply chaos and a thin library. Through the holidays the six-year-old, $129 PS2 comfortably outsells its own replacement — a pattern that repeats for months.
The encore: more solos, more practice mode, Free Bird. Guitar Hero II turns the phenomenon into an empire — and it's still a PS2-first experience.
Bigger set-pieces, better puzzles, the Colossus fight through Atlas's palm — GoW2 is the PS2 operating at its absolute ceiling, a technical showcase released after the PS3 is already out. Frequently called the console's best game.
The last Slim brings the power brick back inside — one cable, nothing external — in the lightest PS2 ever. Its new BIOS quietly breaks early FreeMcBoot installs, a footnote only the homebrew scene notices. Sony will build this model for six more years.
Eight years old and still moving hardware every month — in some months outselling the PS3. The PS2 becomes the default second console of the HD era: cheap, huge library, everything still in print.
Sony cuts the PS2 to $99.99 — the price of two new-release games. It becomes the world's default starter console, sells for years at this price, and pushes lifetime sales past 140 million.
Sony confirms 150 million PS2s sold. The Nintendo DS finishes just behind it at 154 million combined sales, but no home console is close — the record stands as of today, with Sony later citing over 160 million lifetime.
First-party releases dry up and new games dwindle to sports updates and budget titles — but the console won't die. Developers keep shipping PS2 versions for years yet; its audience is simply too big to abandon.
After 12 years and 10 months, shipments to Japanese retailers end. The console outlived not just its rivals — GameCube and Xbox died in 2006 — but an entire hardware generation.
Sony officially confirms the end of PS2 manufacturing. Final tally: ~13 years in production, roughly 4,000 games, over 1.5 billion copies of software sold and 155+ million consoles — numbers no machine has matched since.
Konami's PES 2014 is one of the final boxed games released for the PS2 — a football title still shipping on a console older than some of the players it depicts. The last of roughly 4,000 releases.
Sony starts selling emulated PS2 games on PS4 — upscaled, trophy-enabled, $10–15 each. GTA: San Andreas, Dark Cloud and Rogue Galaxy are among the first. Official PS2 emulation arrives fifteen years after launch.
PlayStation Clinic in Japan stops accepting PS2 units for service — the final official thread cut. From here on, the console's survival belongs to the community: homebrew, repairs and preservation.
Twenty-two years after its first build, PCSX2 releases version 2.0: near-total library compatibility, a modern Qt interface and 4K rendering. The PS2's library is now permanently playable — better than ever — on hardware Sony never made.
Two and a half decades after launch, the PS2's ~155 million record still stands — Sony's own retrospective materials have claimed over 160 million. Its library, its controller, its boot screen and its cube skyline remain embedded in gaming culture.