Will there ever be a console that surpasses the PS2 in total units sold?

The PS2 sold 155+ million units. The last console to come even close to that range was the Wii, and that was a little over 100 million. The PS4 is currently selling at a great pace, with 53.4 million total units sold as of last January. The Switch is having a great launch so far, but that is no way indicative of what total sales will be. Do you think either of these consoles have a chance, SW? Do you think there will ever be a console that crosses the 155+ million mark?

Let me jump in my Tardis.

I honestly doubt it

The PS2 had a twelve year production life so the PS4 is a very long way from having any reasonable basis for estimating.

With Nintendo no longer really focusing on competing with Sony and turning almost exclusively to handheld gaming and Microsoft bombing in sales with the Xbox One as bad as they did with the first Xbox marketplace failure, Sony certainly has the opportunity to.

na.. the PS2 was just the right console at the perfect time

Cheap dvd player and easily hacked for poor countries, you won't see that again

For the Switch to sell at least 100 million units, it will have to sell in countries that Nintendo have never have any business with and a lower price. It may also have to market it like a traditional handheld to get more sales. Finally, it needs long-term mommentum that lasts more than a year. Unless these conditions are reach, I do not see the Switch sell at least 100 million units.

I believe that the Playstation 2 is the home run record holder for home consoles.

the console only sold 120 million.....

then the 360/wii and ps3 released....

after that the ps2 numbers were fabricated....the numbers come from non credited sources.

it's a scam imo..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2_sales

Based on my projections, PS3 sold near 175 million, while PS2 only sold 120 million. Also, Ps2 had the dreaded DRE, killing around 35-40 million consoles, all of which needed to be repurchased, so by that metric PS2 sold maybe 80-85 million, making PS3 most popular by far over the Wii in 2nd.

No console will sell 150 million units ever again

by Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad

Your "Microsoft bombing in sales with the Xbox One as bad as they did with the first Xbox marketplace failure" assertion is a load bullshit.

MS didn't attract the same customer numbers from Nintendo Wii (desktop game console) when compared to PS4.

PS4 ~= PS3 + Wii

XBO ~= X360.

The DS pretty much tied it but no i doubt anything will reach those 2 ever again

@harnessthepower: Where the hell do you get your numbers from?!? The ps3 didn't sell anywhere near 175 million, hell the ps3 and 360 combined probably didn't sell that much lol.

Nope. Cheap DVD player is what inflated it. IMO its the greatest console, but without the DVD player tag I don't think it would have sold as well as it did

Haven't heard that old Dreamcast damage control for the massive PS2 sales in long time.

Decent DVD players were cheaper than the PS2 within its first year. The PS2 was on the market for some twelve years.

nah. sony was fortunate to ride the wave of a perfect confluence of events with the ps2. being a year ahead of the competition (yeah, i know, the dc was there but...c'mon, sega was straight up dumb for far too long leading up to it's release and stymied any chance of success), the great selling point of a built-in and affordable dvd player, riding the coat tails of the mega successful ps1, and, in a similar point, the promise of a wealth of stellar games coming out for it to continue the brand's legacy of the go to platform for pretty much any game you can think of.

i find it hard to believe such a perfect storm of events will take place in the future. and then you have to factor in mobile and pc gaming growing in popularity and it's seems even less likely.

oh and lest we forget the defects that caused many people to be forces into double dipping and it's incredibly long life as an active console (as in being sold brand new in stores/in production)

Well the PS4 sales haven't peaked yet. And the industry has gotten bigger since the PS2 era.

At the same time, kids are becoming very contempt with mobile gaming. So that's a market the PS4 isn't going to gain much ground. Till that demographic ages and develops a deeper interest in more complex games. Other than that, the global population is set to grow by billions. With developed nations set to grow as well. So at some point, the PS2 record will be broken.

No. The PS2 had the biggest franchises exclusive to it like Grand Theft Auto. It was cool as fuk as well.

Hell No.

It won't even sell half that.

Nope the PS2 numbers are not fabricated and not a scam , but Wikipedia can be edit by anyone

Is this question mandatory to appear every month?

Pretty much this...I agree with

Probably not but, never say never.

Yes, since I imagine we're going to be expanding that definition at some point to include devices that do more than just play games. Meaning PC is going to start becoming part of that conversation more prominently, as well as iPhones and others.

I dont think so now that MS is in the mix.

pc does count but how do you get accurate numbers? every pc can play games in some capacity but not everyone will use it for that purpose. if were just counting all pcs then it's already won the numbers game. the number has to be in the billions at this point. same applies to smartphones. those numbers likely also dwarf any console's total sales.

As of August 2009 the PS2 had sold 138.8 million with an additional 12.05 million sold through to the end of 2011. This brings the grand total to ~150 million.

very unlikely. it had a load of things going for it.

• the competition were just not at the races.
• the hype off the back of the PS1 was immense.
• it had a ton of exclusive 3rd party support (why even bother porting to the xbox or gamecube?). it had by far the widest selection of games of any console in the gen.
• hardware wise it was also quite unreliable (the DVD drive was very bad in terms of durability. especially in earlier models) so more sales there.
• DVD was also taking off and the PS2 was a pretty good value DVD player. it hit the market at just the right time.

so unless someone manages to make a console that has a very wide appeal with just the right hook and backs it with a killer library of games for 10 years its going to be very difficult to top that.

which is concerning in a way as there are a lot more people than 155 million on the planet. even accoutning for its 1 per household thats a lot of people not gaming on consoles. how do console makers get more people interested in playing games on a console?

Not without Japan and we know console/handheld sales are in decline over there. I guess it depends more on China. Console sales there are the ones to watch.

lol you are so freaking wrong is not even funny.

By the way the PS2 arrived to 100 million in holiday 2005 exactly when the 360 launch,and the PS2 outsold the xbox 360,in 2005,06 and 07 by the way.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2011/02/14/sony-playstation2-sales-reach-150-million-units/#6c91d01a676f

The numbers came from sony it self so you can stop crying now..lol

Hahahhaaa lol another crazy alt..lol

Hahahahah...Some people just can't admit sony success still with the PS2..

The PS2 was a cheap DVD player in Japan in 2000,but the saving wasn't even close to how big it was on PS3,by the way the xbox also was a DVD player stronger hardware and loss,i guess that take out the notion of been a cheap dvd player the reason why it was successful.

show me the actual sony report...

why wiki has no numbers?

40 million after the 360/ps3 was out?

bull crap.

hmmm actual sony link but...

i don't believe it imo... why wiki didnt write down the numbers?

to me the console sold 120 million

PS3 sold 150 million+, probably closer to 175 million. These numbers can be extracted from the companies public 10-k reports. PS3 is still selling closing to 500k units a month, so we can add another 20-30 million over the next 4-5 years, which should push PS3 sales to be the first 200 million console.

PS4 may come close but PS2 won't never be dethroned

Your mom will surpass it.

In dicks sucked.

ps1 > ps2 for jrpg goodness and still had great 2d platformers

@samfisher56: gta was not exclusive to ps2. It came out for Xbox PC dreamcast gba 360 ps3 gbc but ya most people bought ps2s just for its DVD player

Do you honestly believe something so asinine? Or is it simply you heared other people making the claim and thought you would too?

@mariokart64fan: Last I recall, Gran Turismo 3 and Ico were good games. Also FFX when Final Fantasy still mattered.

I'm not damage controlling the Dreamcast what so ever. I never even owned a Dreamcast LUL. It would be stupidity to thing that the DVD player didn't help the PS2 sales. I'm guessing you also skipped the part where I also said the PS2 is the greatest console ever made @tormentos

Or buying a PS3 as a cheap PS3 player.

Shocking news!

Never said you did.

But you did parrot inane damage control Dreamcast fans from seventeen years ago for why the PS2 was crushing their console in sales. Crazy how these dopey fanboy damage control memes continue to live on no matter how dumb they are.

Did you bother to check what prices of a cheap DVD player was back in the first few years of the PS2's life?

You didn't did you? Because if you did you wouldn't have posted something so inane. Instead you parroted some ancient fanboy damage control because you wanted to sound like you had some sort of insight into PS2 sales.

Nor did you bother to stop to think why the hell the entire console development world essentially dropped the Dreamcast overnight for a console where any significant number of people were buying just the hardware and not games.

@gfxpipeline: But you also can't deny that the DVD player addition helped with sales. You know its true. The PS2 as a console was lightyears better than the Dreamcast and XBOX. Maybe not so much specs wise, but as a family console with a huge diverse games library. That is the main selling point. But you and I both know a percentage (which we will never know) of the PS2 sales was purely for a DVD player. FACT

I know for a fact (here in AUS) that the PS2 was cheaper than ALL DVD PLAYERS ON RELEASE. FACT

i agree

If MS did with RRoD concerning 360's what Phony did with DRE PS2's ie. counting all the sales from people needing to by 3 - 5 PS2's through the gen than 360 would have already beat PS2 but thankfully MS did free replacements on those 360's affected and didn't count them as another sale., :P

Who would know the sold numbers better than the manufacturer? These are officially published numbers. Lying about them would be fraud. I'm pretty sure Sony isn't as interested in an e-penis measuring contest as you are.

The Wikipedia article published an estimated total based on the two sources I cited.

You can make up whatever stats you like. Why not 12 million?

Yes when the 3rd world countries develop and the gap between rich and poor lessens through redistribution of wealth so that everyone on Earth has at least the wealth to buy a wall socket, some Mountain Dew/Dorito's and a game console, we will see every console sell hundreds of millions more than PS2.

Also, police/emergency services would be able to play more games because of a drop in crime/diseases and the rich would live in a happy world they won't need to shy away from.

It's pretty much impossible to calculate PC sales, the majority of PC gamers build their own PC's using hardware from a multitude of different after market companies. This is the one area that console only gamers have all to themselves.

PS4 will pass it eventually. Sometime next decade... i personaly don't want a PS5 so i'll buy another PS4. PRO or ULTRA? xD