Kotaku: "We've joked about its refusal to die before, but today, finally, the console begins its march into the history books. Having sold over 150 million units since its release in 2000, the PlayStation 2 has today ceased shipping to Japanese retailers, meaning once remaining stock is gone, it's gone."
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A moment of silence for the king of HOME consoles.
If you are in the US, you can still get them from any location, new or used. http://us.playstation.com/w...
lol
But one can't be real on N4G because the fanboys will take away your bubbles and flood you with disagrees. On this site the comments with the most disagrees are often the ones you should believe the most.
The used fat one I got earlier this year was hacked and running backups from the hdd. I'm still playing games too, so many!!!!!!
No offense sony but you could have retired (the hardware) when the ps3 was released.
That doesnt mean game development would have to stop for it. Games generally continue to get released even after the hardware stops flowing.
i retired my PS2 when I got my 80gb BC PS3 simply because I would still be able to play my PS2 games on the new system.
sony, you have your reasons for doing things but that doesnt mean they are the right ones. Bad decisions are bad decisions and while you had great success with the ps2 platform...the bad decision was to continue to promote it instead of putting more marketing effort into your new flagship successor.
Eh...that last part is my own POV in regards to it being a bad decision but sony had made some straight up bad decisions with the best intentions.
And since this is geared towards the "hardware" I make no disparaging remarks to the library of games. They are, if not one of, the best library of games ever released. So much diversity for any type of player.
I don't know man. I have a hard time grieving a console that did 150 million in sales. Don't see it falling anywhere remotely close to the Sony "bad desisions" pile. They were selling more PS2s than 360s in Japan, why would they stop shipments of guaranteed money?
When MS killed off the first XBox, they also killed off game development for it. PS2 still had games in the pipeline. Supply and demand. Still had new AAA games being released for it 2006 and beyond like GOW2 and Okami.
As to your promotion peeve, I haven't seen the PS2 truly promoted since a couple years ago at E3 and that was more Tretton stat padding than "check out these new PS2 games". Even the PS1/PS2 classics on PSN have been anemic at best.
I retired my PS2 catalogue when I got my PS3 too, but it wasn't until late 2007. The PS3 didn't really start selling until MGS4 and the subsequent price drops and Slim models. I think Sony's faux pas was more pricing themselves out of the market in the beginning and playing catch up on services like PSN which didn't even have in-game messaging/XMB at the time. Their competition imo was more from MS and Wii's lower price points. MS' year head start made almost everything a timed exclusive on the XBox, and cheaper to play multiplats.
of removing my foot from my mouth in the previous statement.
I am just stating that had sony retired the ps2 sooner it could have lead to more marketing push for the ps3.
I see from the disagrees above that i phrased it wrong. But no matter as now sony can proceed full steam ahead with their current projects.
on a side note, the timing to stop production of anything is a risky one. It took nintendo several years after the SNES to put the NES out to pasture.
We know both sony and nintendo share the same values in long production runs but what about MS? They dropped the xbox after the 360 came out but would they be as abrupt again with their next system?
The answer to that question is the answer to this question: So what do people who want to play their newly purchased PC game do now when they don't meet the system requirements?
http://i.imgur.com/GMtbx.gi...
Pretty close to one anyway.
like in some shops you see brand new versions of Final Fantasy X/X-2/XII, Grand Theft Auto III/SA/VC, GT4 etc. stocked very well and still somewhat flying off the shelves.
I've been calling it for a while. I thought they'd do it sometime during the 1st half of 2013, but it seems like they want to slowly phase it out. I also think that at E3 Sony will kill the PS2 for good while price cutting the PS3 (or just introduce the 12GB worldwide). sad, but it needs to happen for sake of the PS3/PS4/Vita
once Vita gets a sizable library, the PSP will go too but that might take a few years.
Good bye, old friend. (this isn't the end for me, however. There are sill plenty of games on the PS2 I have yet to finish before I put it to rest.)
That or get an emulator.
Nevermind that Sony wants/needs to sell to the general consumer.
The difference would be that it would be marketed to those that actually wanted that feature, so those that didn't care about it wouldn't have to bear the cost burden.
Truly whatever Sony does is going to get hate, so why not at least try to make the consumer happy. It wouldn't even have to be something that lasts through the entire life of the console, as most people buying them now aren't worried about BC.
I don't see it happening, but what Conzul suggested would be a day one for me.
And that's still the thing: where Sony marketed the PS3's features, someone else was saying they weren't needed.
It didn't matter that the Xbox saw an HD-DVD add-on early in its life or made several changes to compensate for shortcomings in DVD space, much of the same crowd which touted such as innovation still say that Blu-ray isn't needed. There's also a podcaster who went out of his way not to buy a $500 PS3 who spent $2000 to do it.
Things have just gotten stupid, so don't expect Sony to make a high feature product while asking a high price for it. They've already been taught that horrible lesson with the PS3.
Despite what all the press, and some others were saying, the BC feature was good for consumers that wanted it, and realistically wasn't the main reason the PS3 was priced so high. That had more to do with the Cell and Blu-Ray, but when it came time to cut costs, it was about the only big line item that could be removed without causing incompatibility.
The situation that Conzul describes though is a bit different. It's not forcing a higher priced model because of the extra hardware, and lets the consumer decide. Sites and fanboys will still hate on it, and say how it needs to be in all the SKU's so it's really a no win situation for Sony, and in the end it's really the consumers that lose out. As such it would be better for Sony to keep consumer interest in mind, and not worry so much about what the haters will say.
I wholeheartedly agree with you though that things have just gotten stupid.
You did good.
the old warrior never dies
It has had a good long run now.
I wonder when Sony will announce the PS4? I think a tease at CES would be nice. Since Microsoft not there this year it would give Sony a good platform for it.
As far as backward compatibility goes, I couldn't give a rat's hind quarters, I bought a PS3 to play new games.
I owned a ps1 and skipped on console gaming during the ps2 era. I became a pc gamer. I later went back to console gaming and bought a ps3 during launch month. There are certain ps2 games that are now classic i regret not experiencing back when it was fresh and amazing though.
I had a friend who was dating this Japanese chick.. she brought him a PS2 before it had came out here in the states.
The first game that I saw was Kessen. My jaw dropped, I had to have one of these!
Loved Nintendo but I felt they were losing me with not that many mature games available. I mean they had some but due to life's quagmires affecting me at the time, my interest in gaming kind of faded til I saw a Ps2 in action.
I come from a long line of gaming folks and working in the game shops so I've seen just about all of the consoles out there at the time.
Finally got a Ps2 in '02 and it literally brought me back to my childhood love!
I haven't looked back or stopped gaming since.. Thanks Ps2, since then, I have never stopped playing, NEVER.
Long Live Play!
P.S. one of my favorite games was Rise To Honor. That was an amazing fighting game! Super Jet Li fan and that game was so fun and a bit ahead of it's time.. peace
I still have a working fat ps2, That fat ps2 is about 12 or 13 years old now
The PS2 ushered some of the greatest games in the industry & the way it has lasted this long is a testament to the PS2's design and the way it was accepted in the homes of all kind of gamers.
I salute you PS2 may it finally find the peace it deserves. PS2 you have served us well.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
And is not just that, new PS2s have compatibility issues with 90% of every 3rd party peripherals and it has problems reading old games like Star Ocean 3 too. And believe me, I know about this since I play more retro games than current gen games and was forced to stop playing Star Ocean 3 because the games freezes all the time and the same with Dragon Quest 8.
And between the phat and slim the phat PS2 are the better ones but not by much.
However, having repaired many systems, I can say that 99% of the ones I repaired were obviously misused, and more than half of those just needed the lens to be cleaned.. However, the actual fail rate of the system was less than 10%. People always say it was much worse than it was because most people that didn't have problems probably aren't going to comment on it.
As far as Sony getting sued, that particular lawsuit was only applicable to the first 2 models of the system(possibly 3, can't remember when they went to the single system board). It wasn't because of an extraordinarily high fail rate, it was due to an extraordinarily high charge for repairing the devices that were affected.
It's not to say that some of the later models didn't have problems, as they did and I did repair them, but with so many systems out on the market it is normal to have those that fail.
OT
I'll wait for an official word from Sony stating that all production ceases to exist in ALL territories before I give the final farewell. It was a dark day when the PS1 was officially retired, and it will be a dark day when the PS2 is also completely retired.