The PlayStation 2 sold more units than any games console before it, and its production run lasted almost thirteen years. Sony’s own figures put its shipments at more than 160 million. It arrived in Japan on 4 March 2000 to scenes Edge had never seen at a console launch: police were called to Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district to control the crowds.
Inside, it was two machines in one. A new processor, the Emotion Engine, ran PlayStation 2 games. Beside it, doing the input and output, sat the processor from the original PlayStation, which could take over the whole machine to run the old games. The console also played DVD films, which Sony had not promised when it first described the machine.
Fast facts
- Manufacturer: Sony Computer Entertainment.
- Launch: Japan 4 March 2000 (¥39,800); North America 26 October 2000 ($299); Europe 24 November 2000 (£299 in the UK).
- CPU: Emotion Engine, a “128bit RISC (MIPS IV subset)” design, at 294.912 MHz.
- Graphics: Graphics Synthesizer at 147.456 MHz, with 4 MB of embedded video memory.
- RAM: 32 MB of Direct Rambus main memory.
- Sound: SPU2, 48 channels plus software voices, with 2 MB of sound memory.
- I/O processor: a PlayStation CPU, running at the original machine’s 33.8688 MHz or at 36.864 MHz, with 2 MB of its own memory.
- Media: DVD-ROM (4x) and CD-ROM (24x); plays DVD films and audio CDs.
- Storage: 8 MB memory card.
- Production ended: 2013.
- Sales: more than 160 million, by Sony’s count.
The specification, as announced
Sony revealed the new technology at an event in Tokyo in early 1999, held amid celebrations for the 50-millionth PlayStation, and Edge printed the specification table that April. The processor was listed at 300 MHz and the main memory as “32Mb Direct Rambus”. The table went on:
| Floating point | 6.2 GFLOPS |
| Geometry, transform only | 66m polys/sec |
| …plus lighting | 38m polys/sec |
| …plus fog | 36m polys/sec |
| Bézier surface generation | 16m polys/sec |
| Image processing | 150m pixels/sec |
| Memory bus | 3.2 Gb/sec |
The geometry rows show how the headline figure was reached. Transforming polygons alone gives 66 million a second; lighting them brings that down to 38 million, and adding fog to 36 million. Those are still theoretical peaks. When Edge compared the three new consoles in January 2002, it put the PS2’s “estimated real performance” at 20 million polygons a second.
The Graphics Synthesizer’s figures are about moving data. Its video memory sits on the same chip as the drawing hardware, joined by a “DRAM Bus Width” of “2,560bits” for a “Total Memory Bandwidth” of 48 GB a second. That is fifteen times the main memory bus. Each pixel stores 24 bits of colour, 8 of alpha (transparency) and a 32-bit depth value: “RGB:Alpha:Z Buffer (24:8:32)”.
By the machine’s public unveiling in Tokyo on 13 September 1999, hosted by Ken Kutaragi, the clocks had been set at 294.912 MHz for the Emotion Engine and 147.456 MHz for the Graphics Synthesizer. The embedded video memory was 4 MB. Sony also showed the Dual Shock 2 joypad, whose buttons were “analogue, velocity-sensitive”, and an 8 MB memory card. A development kit cost ¥2,000,000.
The old machine is still in there
The shortest line in the April 1999 table is the most interesting. Under the I/O processor, where a specification normally names a controller chip, it says:
CPU Core — Current PlayStation CPU
The PlayStation 2’s input/output processor (IOP) looks after the controllers, memory cards and disc drive while the Emotion Engine runs the game. Its core is the original PlayStation’s processor. In the September 1999 table its clock is “33.8688/36.864MHz (selectable)”, and 33.8688 MHz is exactly the speed Sony’s manual gives for the first PlayStation’s CPU. When a PlayStation disc goes in, that processor runs the old game.
DVD
In April 1999 Edge expected the first games to come on CD-ROM and reported that the console was “not expected to play DVD movies out of the box”, with an add-on module to follow. By September Sony had changed course: the machine would play DVD films as it came. Edge watched a demonstration disc at the Tokyo Game Show and judged the picture equal to dedicated players “in the £500 region”, with Dolby Digital and DTS sound through an optical output.
Launch
Sony aimed to ship a million consoles in the first week in Japan. Shops in Akihabara handed out numbered tickets, and the police stepped in on launch day. According to Sony’s own figures, reported by Edge, 480,000 machines were sold through its website and 620,000 through shops between 4 and 6 March.
The US launch on 26 October 2000 was smaller than planned: Sony cut its launch shipment from a million units to 500,000. Europe followed on 24 November. In Britain the £299 price drew what Edge called “a series of indignant headlines”, and Sony’s UK marketing director, Alan Welsman, defended it: “There is no gain in us pricing it higher than we think the market can bear.”
Programming it at home
Sony gave European owners a way to program the machine from the first day. Every European console came with a demo disc carrying Yabasic, an open-source BASIC interpreter that an SCEE team led by Mike Dean had ported with its author’s permission, adding a text editor, an HTML viewer and support for USB keyboards. “Most of the people who are into games programming now grew up on Commodores, BBCs, and Spectrums,” Dean told Edge. “Their way into programming was through simple BASIC languages that came free with the machine.” The examples included a spinning 3D object and a particle demonstration, though Dean warned that “People won’t be able to make multi-level 3D dungeons with Yabasic”.
Sony went further with Linux for PlayStation 2, released first in Japan and then, in 2002, in Europe and North America. The European kit cost €249 plus VAT and contained a 40 GB hard drive, an Ethernet adaptor, a USB keyboard and mouse, and a monitor cable. It had shipped over 9,000 in Japan and 2,000 in Europe by mid-2002. “This isn’t something we want to promote as a mainstream release,” Sarah Ewen, who ran the programme, told Edge. “It’s designed for those people who already know a bit about Linux or those who are interested in programming on their PlayStation2s.” Edge noted that the kit marked the first time Sony had released the PS2’s hardware manuals outside its licensed developers.
Games
The PlayStation 2 kept the first machine’s publishers and gained Sega’s. When Sega left the hardware business in January 2001, it announced Virtua Fighter 4 for the PS2. Capcom’s Devil May Cry began there in August 2001, and DMA Design’s Grand Theft Auto III came out on the PS2 that year. Online play arrived with a separate network adaptor, on sale in the US and Japan by the autumn of 2002, while Europe was still waiting.
Looking back in 2013, Edge counted “all 3,800 games” and singled out Fumito Ueda’s Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Hideki Kamiya’s Okami, Keita Takahashi’s Katamari Damacy, Harmonix’s Guitar Hero, Sony London Studio’s SingStar and Rockstar’s 3D GTA games.
Later years
A slimmer model with built-in Ethernet followed in 2004, according to public sources. The machine went on selling long after the PlayStation 3 arrived in 2006; public sources give 4 January 2013 as the end of production. Edge called it “the highest-selling videogame console of all time — 155 million and counting” in October 2013. Sony’s corporate figures now give cumulative shipments of more than 160 million.
Sources
- Edge issue 70, April 1999, p. 7: the Tokyo announcement amid the 50-millionth PlayStation celebrations, the announced specification table, the I/O processor’s “Current PlayStation CPU”, and the early reports on CD-ROM games and DVD films.
- Edge issue 77, autumn 1999, p. 7: the 13 September 1999 unveiling, Ken Kutaragi, the ¥39,800 price and 4 March date, the one-million target, the preliminary specification with final clocks and the I/O processor’s selectable clock, DVD film playback, the Dual Shock 2, the 8 MB memory card and the ¥2,000,000 development kit.
- Sony Computer Entertainment, PlayStation Hardware (1998), p. 2-3: the first PlayStation’s 33.8688 MHz system clock.
- Edge issue 83, April 2000: the Japanese launch, police in Akihabara. Edge issue 84, May 2000, p. 10: SCEI’s sales figures for 4-6 March.
- Edge issue 89, October 2000, p. 11: the £299 UK price and Alan Welsman’s comment.
- Edge issue 92, Christmas 2000: the US launch and the cut to 500,000 units (p. 7); Yabasic on the European demo disc and Mike Dean’s words (p. 96).
- Edge issues 90 and 91, November and December 2000: 24 November European release dates for launch games.
- Edge issue 106, January 2002, p. 65: the three-console comparison, with the PS2’s “estimated real performance”.
- Edge issue 112, July 2002, p. 16: Linux for PlayStation 2, its contents and price, shipments, and Sarah Ewen’s words.
- Edge issue 115, October 2002: the PS2 network adaptor on sale in the US and Japan.
- Edge issue 95, March 2001, pp. 8-9: Sega’s move to other companies’ hardware and Virtua Fighter 4 for the PS2.
- Edge issue 258, October 2013, p. 73: “155 million and counting”, “all 3,800 games”, and the games named.
- Sony Interactive Entertainment, corporate “Business Data & Sales” page, accessed September 2026 (web, secondary): PlayStation 2 cumulative shipments “More than 160 million”. https://sonyinteractive.com/en/corporate/data.html
- Wikipedia, “PlayStation 2” (web, secondary): the US price of $299, the 2004 slim model, the PlayStation 3’s 2006 launch and the end of production on 4 January 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2