This Week in Retro: The PlayStation 2

March 4, 2000: Sony Cements Its Place in History with a Second PlayStation

by Diamond Feit

How many times can a company create a product that takes over the entire world? How many opportunities to capture the zeitgeist are enough? Xerox, Kleenex, Dumpster: These are all things that people have used so much, the brand has become synonymous with the objects themselves. And for kids in the 1980s, we all had walkmans, even if they weren't necessarily a Walkman®; Sony's personal stereo system became such an indispensable accessory that imitators were plentiful but the name stuck. The name Nintendo chose for their landmark handheld console, "Game Boy," was entirely a nod to the legacy of Sony's personal handheld device.

When Sony launched the PlayStation in the U.S. in 1995, it took off in a hurry. It wasn't Walkman-huge, as the sheer number of existing, competing systems made such a market takeover impossible. Yet despite being a "newcomer" to the field it was quickly seen as an equal to Sega and Nintendo. By the time I spent a summer selling video games at Software Etc. two years later, the Sony PlayStation easily commanded the largest section of the store.

Three years after that—five years from the U.S. launch—Sony released the PlayStation 2 into a very different video game landscape. Nintendo was no longer the untouchable king of the yard as the costly, slower Nintendo 64 had struggled to keep up with the PlayStation's affordable firehose of a game library. Sega's Dreamcast had beaten the PlayStation 2 to market by a couple years in Japan but was still lagging behind the older PlayStation in popularity. If anything, Sony's biggest competitor for the PlayStation 2 was its own predecessor, a family rivalry that Sony undercut with two magic words: Backward compatibility.

When the console wars had kicked off at the start of the 1990s, many consumers were taken aback by the notion of a new console not playing the old console's games. Buying a new TV or VCR didn't mean tossing your collection of videotapes, but buying a Super Nintendo meant you couldn't play your NES games on it. Sega offered an accessory for the Genesis that played Sega Master System games, but the Master System was never a hit, and when that offer would have meant something to fans (i.e. the Saturn following the Genesis), Sega didn't offer any such option.

By the year 2000, the PlayStation had thousands of games to its name, far more than any of its rivals. Sony had already done a lot of work to convince video game buyers to take a chance on their new console; it would have been a tall order to ask them to give up that massive library for another new machine. Backwards compatibility with all the PS1 games that lined every store shelf made the PlayStation 2 an easy choice for new and experienced game customers alike.

Just as with backward compatibility, the name of the console was also a brilliant move to smooth the transition. Video game consoles didn't typically do "sequels"; each new machine got a new name and a new identity. For Sony to call this the PlayStation 2 made it clear to consumers that this would be follow-up to the first PlayStation, a direct continuation of an already-successful product. 

There was one more ace up Sony's sleeve when releasing the PlayStation 2 in the year 2000: every system played DVDs. After videotapes had ruled the 1980s (and LaserDiscs failed to replace them), the late ’90s saw two competing formats to replace VHS: DVD and DIVX. The one you've never heard of lost, but that initial uncertainty slowed the mainstream adoption of DVDs in the U.S. By 2000, dedicated DVD players were still costly, so a video game console that supported the hot new video format and that aforementioned library of existing games was a complete knockout at retail. Lifetime sales of the PlayStation 2 exceeded 155 million consoles, a number that no other home console has come close to toppling (two months ago Sony boasted the PlayStation 4 has sold 106 million units, but the company has also revealed that the PlayStation 5 is backward-compatible and may be released before this year is out).

I haven't had much to say about the PlayStation 2's own library of groundbreaking games because I bought it before there was a single interesting title on the market. I had played so much PlayStation 1 and already owned a decent number of DVDs in 2000 that it just made sense to upgrade the system, even though I spent most of my time playing Dreamcast and Neo Geo. The PlayStation 2 was simply inevitable, almost the way we treat new smartphones now. 

Part of me resents the success of the PlayStation 2 as all other consoles were left in its dust, killing the Dreamcast far too soon, but eventually even the 2D arcade ports I loved found a home on PlayStation as well—everything did, as Wikipedia lists no less than 4490 PlayStation 2 game releases across all regions. The PlayStation 2 did so well that it overshadowed its own successor, the PlayStation 3, despite the latter's leap to HD graphics, an (almost) always-online network, and an initial promise of backwards compatibility. It reminds of how the "Walkman" brand outlived cassette tapes, overshadowing the Discman (and Mini-Disc players) that was meant to replace it, only to later falter when MP3 players took over. It turns out when you create products that reshape the market and become global hits, you can't always convince consumers to leave them behind for your latest invention. Even a history of success is no guarantee that success will be predictable or repeatable—especially when it comes to video games... [thinks about the PlayStation Vita for no reason at all]