When Sony first announced they would be entering the home video game console market then dominated by Nintendo and Sega, it caused quite a stir simply because there’d be a new entrant challenging the status quo. Sony had a reputation as an innovative company, having producing the Walkman in 1979, the world’s first portable cassette player that would unofficially become the name for any portable cassette player.
The PlayStation was received very positively among gamers, setting the scene for the PlayStation 2 (PS2) to be released in 2000. Sony had marketed its PlayStation consoles for gamers who weren’t young kids. Instead it was gaming for adolescents and adults, which created some differentiation from Nintendo and Sega.
When the PS2 was launched, it flew off the shelves and was sold out in no time. People were desperate to get their hands on the 6th generation 64-bit console, having been teased with snippets of gameplay and the understanding that it would provide multiplayer gaming capabilities over the internet. People sold their PS2s for as much as $1,000 on eBay.
The PS2 is the best selling video game console of all time, selling over 155 million units worldwide and released iconic games such as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Gran Turismo 3 & 4, and Final Fantasy X. Even as the PlayStation 3 was being released, people were weighing up buying a PS2 because of its cheaper price and its library of games that could still be competitive against the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii.
