/vr/ - Retro Games

The PS2 was a lifestyle brand.

>>8063243
Cheap and a DVD player with the most games along with strong 1st party and 3rd party support, the mini discs crippled the Gamecube, the Xbox brand was finding it's footing and identity and the Dreamcast was crushed by PS2 hype, Sega's tarnished brand and super easy piracy.

Turns out having games people want to play and an accessible price point leads to loads of sales.

>>8063243
Piracy, gaming in the third world is way more expensive than first world countries.
>t.third world faggot.

Lots of reasons.

The price of a PS2 was barely above what a DVD player cost in 2000 and played both PS1 games and DVDs, so the value to consumers on release was evident. Many households figured, why not get the game console that plays DVDs instead of this equally expensive DVD player.

This was known to consumers months and months in advance, so Dreamcast launching three months earlier was less of a threat since it only played DC games and audio CD.

The economy at the time was the best it had ever been so buying a PS2 wasn't seen as unattainable.

The competition wasn't really offering anything better, and over time a lot of "exclusives" ended up on PS2, which had a pretty deep cadre of actual exclusive games. I mean, if you had to pick one console, the PS2 was the smart decision just based on choice of games, let alone value.

It's basically just a situation of Sony successfully reading the room and releasing the correct product at the correct time.

It's almost hard to believe those figures. I was there of course, I remember a lot of people had one, but if you asked me to guess I just couldn't give a figure that high. I would guess 70-80m worldwide tops.

DVD support was a genuinely huge deal, though. I do remember years later my non-gaming sister bought a secondhand PS2 simply because she wanted a DVD player.

>>8063254
In 2001, the PS2 was the same price as the Xbox and $50 more than the GameCube. I have no idea where this notion that it was a cheaper option came from.

>>8063314
It was cheaper by the time the GC and especially Xbox launched.

>>8063359
No it wasn’t. I literally just said in 2001 when the GameCube and Xbox launched within like two weeks of each other.

I think the cheap build led people to buy more PS2s.

>>8063243
>How did this even happen?
People bough 160 million of them. Simple as.

>>8063314
He meant a cheap DVD player. I was a kid at the time and my dad was pushing for me to want a PS2 because he was excited to use DVDs. Poor guy though, cause I ended up asking him for the gamecube.

They played all their cards right in the 5th gen, blowing loads of millions in advertising and selling hardware at a loss. PS1 didn't really earn Sony profit, it was a loss, but their goal was to penetrate the market and establish the brand quickly, which they succeeded at.
Add to that that they owned the factories where CDs (and later, DVDs) were pressed.
By the time PS2 was released, PlayStation as a brand was universally acknowledged and people were hyped, add to that the DVD functionality which in the year 2000 was a total selling point like you wouldn't imagine if you weren't there.
Finally, piracy. While it was possible to pirate stuff on GC and Xbox, PS2's piracy scene was just gigantic. Any 3rd world country you'd visit would have hundreds of street vendors with thousands of pirated PS2 titles selling for pennies. I don't remember seeing any GC or Xbox piracy, I only remember people talking about it online, but IRL, all the piracy I could see was PS2.
Also in countries like UK, Brazil, Argentina and other assorted soccer-fanatic countries, millions bought a PS2 only to play FIFA or Winning Eleven. Not even exaggerating, millions of people bought it just to play that. It still happens today.
Anyway, these are some of the main reasons. Having a gigantic catalogue and loads of 3rd party support is part of being a well established brand name and Sony offering cheap deals when it came to licensing and pressing the games (tied to the fact they own the disc pressing factories)

>>8063270
Can confirm 100%
>t.Brazil faggot.

>>8063258
I can honestly say that the PS2 doesn't have any games that I want to play

>>8063243
Only the Gamecube is inexcusable. The Dreamcast had an early death, and the Xbox was a brand new name, and intended for a different kind of audience, with it's focus on online features (then a novelty).

>>8063424
The Xbox was extremely popular in USA but not in Europe or Japan, which is the case still today 20 years later.

>>8063427
Still outsold the GC

>>8063428
Yeah, that's a feat for being a new comer honestly.
But then Xbox kept having 3rd place every time despite already being a household name.

>>8063431
The Xbox's breakthrough isn't that impressive considering Playstation did it 6 years earlier and Sony was less of a brand name for games than Microsoft. Its probably the last time we'll see such a breakthrough though.

>>8063431
I don’t know, I think I’d give the 360 the edge for the seventh gen. I know the PS3 technically outsold it but it was the lead platform for most AAA games and was considered the superior multiplat machine. Plus XBL was hugely profitable for them.

>>8063243
Dvds. Sony isnt just about video games tard lord.

It kind of sucked that the Xbox needed an add-on in order to play DVDs but the playback quality was generally considered superior to what the PS2 had.

>>8063243
PS2 had great value with the DVD player and backwards compatibility, plus it had some great early releases.

That early hype attracted customers, which in turn attracted developers, so its library grew very quickly in relation to others.

Finally, there were good games coming out for the PS2 throughout its lifetime, which sustained sales even for a decent amount of time after the PS3 was out.

The only bad thing about the PS2 is that there is lots of shovelware and jank games in the library, but its no where near as bad as some people make it out to be.

>>8063270
>>8063417
This, as a BR I've met dozens upon dozens of PS2 owners (most got it after 2005) but can count on one hand the people who had any of the other systems.
It's mostly bullshit that piracy kills consoles, if anything it's a small monetary loss and an important market share gain in first world markets and the reason to get a console in third world countries, so much so that the PS2 only sold about half that amount during its generation and why console gaming is pretty much non-existent here since the 8th gen started, save for adults and rich kids

>>8063470
It kind of blew my mind when I found out that Persona 4’s original PS2 release was in fucking 2008.

I know every anon has said it already but DVD player anon. They were expensive and shit back then. The PS2 was a good cheap dvd player that played games. My relatively poor family still had multiple PS2s in the house cause they played movies

>>8063243
Built in DvD player when DvD players were still expensive.

>>8063243
Bigger market share requires mass market appeal. Instead of competing to get gamer money, Sony looked for normie money too. And boy were DVDs HOT at the time OP.

>>8063243
it had gud games

>>8063243
Successor to the best console ever at the time, the PS1.

>>8063478
Whoa, you can't discuss that here. Lets stick to more ungames like Crysis, okay?

>>8063475
>It's mostly bullshit that piracy kills consoles
I would say it helps with preservation. Imagine if we did not have Roms, Emulators and the open ecosystem we have on PC's today. A lot of obscure things would have died out and nobody would know about any hidden gems, or people would be stuck at the hands of those collectors,scalpers, pawnshops, and other places that are trying to make a huge buck off of everyone else. There is also companies that went under and games that will never be re-released due to that. So piracy is a good thing as is roms and emulation.

>>8063484
It’s DVD, all caps you weirdo.

>>8063243
I would say a combination of things.
1. DVD player and it also played CD's(which PS1 did but not as good as PS2)
2. Tons of AA games and 1st party support. Seriously just look at the years 2000,2001,2002,2003 for Video games on PS2 and the release dates, everything was happening all at once to keep track. It was just popular with everyone at the time.

>>8063470
Do not forget PS2 was easier to develop for. Which is something Sony has kind of been awful at in the last 2 generations alone on.

>>8063553
W-what? It’s the opposite. The PS1 was easy to develop for, the PS2 and PS3 had notoriously complex architectures and the PS4/PS5 are essentially just PCs.

>>8063553
>Do not forget PS2 was easier to develop for
Not really, that was the PS1, PS2 is notoriously sketchy to work with.

>>8063243
>built-in DVD player, was cheaper than most DVD players by itself with the added bonus of playing vidya and didn't require a remote or homebrew software like the Xbox
>1 year head start on other consoles, obliterated the Dreamcast too because of brand recognition and DVD player
>very, very strong exclusive lineup in 2001
>online play was free besides MMO's
>very long lifespan, was still getting games well into the PS3's lifespan, and most PS3 models weren't actually backwards compatible with PS2
>many were forced to buy the console twice due to faulty DVD drive that would die after a few years (often less if DVD movies are played a lot)

>>8063594
>was cheaper than most DVD players by itself
This has always been a lie, I wonder if it started in nintendo power or something?

>>8063605
Why in the world would Nintendo Power say something like that?

>>8063605
>Nintendo Power spreads a lie that makes the PS2 sound like an incredible value
lol I don’t think you thought this post through, anon.

>>8063314
>He meant a cheap DVD player.
This
I think it's hard for both enthusiasts (and streaming-era zoomers, of course) to really grasp how big of a deal the shift from VHS to DVD was for normalfags.

>>8063605
I'm sure you could find a standalone DVD player for cheaper if you looked in the right places, but most department stores still sold em for $400-500 a pop, and would you rather spend that much on both a dedicated DVD player and a next-gen console? Or just get it all in one package?

PS2 had games. It's that simple.

>>8063608
>>8063612
makes it sound like it's a movie playing device above all which would match the kind of shitposting we've had here since the mid 2000s. Such an often parroted lie makes it seem like it came from a major source.

>>8063615
I was fucking obsessed with DVDs. I remember buying my first DVD before even having a DVD player myself, I would go to my richfag cousin's house and watch it there. The posibility of pausing the movie and getting crystal-clear still images was mind-blowing. The crisp quality of it all kept blowing my mind in ways HD/4K barely did.
I then remember getting a DVD player and it was expensive as shit, it was more expensive than regular DVD players because I wanted a multi-region one, which at the time was really uncommon.
In hindsight, fuck DVD regions, what a jewish thing.

>>8063243
Most of those sales were post 2006 and in South America.

>>8063620
Well back in the early 00s, getting a game console as well as a DVD player for $300 was a pretty good value. Plus the PS2’s game library rocketed into high gear in the fall of 2001.

DVD player plus backwards compatibility was a pretty big deal at the time.

It was also a cheaply made piece of shit that broke all the time

>>8063628
>The posibility of pausing the movie and getting crystal-clear still images was mind-blowing.
For me it was the fact that you could watch a laserdisc without having a giant chinese mirror that broke or warped easily, and had to be flipped to watch a full movie. Same thing but more compact and digital, and way less finnicky. That and not shitting my pants everytime a rented tape threatened to get stuck in the reading head of my vhs.
DVD players were gigantic and expensive as fuck, PS2 as a DVD player was a much more appealing package in hindsight.

>>8063642
I never knew LDs were a thing back then, never knew anyone who had an LD player and I don't think I ever saw any LDs in stores at all either.
And yeah my multi-region DVD player is big, I still have it. It works but it's very picky, some of my DVDs it won't read even though they're not scratched or anything, I don't know whats the deal, but some others it plays perfectly.

>>8063636
Still got my original PS2 hooked up to my TV, works perfectly. Was the last console I ever bought.

>>8063617
Most department stores had the same $90 one bestbuy did in 2000. If cheap DVD player was your goal, you had that. PS2 was sold as a PS2, that's why people wanted it.

>>8063243
It had to be the DVD player.
Anecdote:
At my place, our first DVD player was a PS2. My mom made us move it from our room to the living room so she and my dad could watch The Aviator. And from then on it stayed there.
I do remember thinking the change from VHS to DVD was insane. Similar to the experience of playing cheap 2D games in DOS and then getting a N64 for my birthday.

I think the backwards comparability helped sell it too.

>>8063662
I'm not from USA, in my country DVD playrs were expensive as shit. $400-$500 seem accurate from what I remember.
$90 for a DVD player in the year 2000 seems crazy cheap, you guys were lucky if that's real.

>>8063696
>you guys were lucky if that's real.
you can go on waybackmachine and look up bestbuy's site at the time and see it.

>>8063658
he prob meant the DVD drive which is true, ps2's DVD drive is the cheapest piece of shit ever made.

>>8063662
having one device that played games and played movies was dead useful, and I sure as fuck bought a used PS2 in 2003 with the explicit intention of playing DVDs on it
a lot of people think player price was a huge deal, but DVD player prices dropped like a rock -- in 1999, they might have been like $200 minimum, but come 2000, prices had cratered to sub-$100 if you didn't buy a particularly fancy one

>>8063785
>having one device that played games and played movies was dead useful
I agree, a PS2 was very appealing for this reason.

>>8063405
>Poor guy
Figuratively and literally. He has a retarded child and couldn't afford a GC that played DVDs.

>>8063243
It was dirt cheap as a DVD player and it was shoved down poor peoples throats in third world places.

>>8063243
Games for every type of player out there.

Here's something even crazier: The PSOne outsold the original Xbox (28 million vs 24 million).
And I don't mean the first PlayStation as a whole, I mean just the redesigned slim model that was released in the summer of 2000.

Normies discovered video games.

>>8063785
People forget how tech and tech prices moves when they didn't experience it and rely only on Wikipedia articles at best. I've had to point out to people how long floppy disks were used by normies, academia and business as they think that DAY 1 of USB invented we all switched over to USB memory sticks and floppies went in the trash and so on. It's delusional. I can remember the first mac having no floppy drive and only USB was seen as nuts by so many as basically no one had USB drives (expensive!) and so everyone had to get USB floppy drives hanging off the side of the machine to go with their large amount of media they had already. It took a long time for USB drives to get reliable and cheap like they are now where you can pretty much just give them away as we would with floppies in the past.

The PS2 by comparison was a great idea. Absolutely flawless timing. People want a games console already and are looking at the market for options and then Sony throw in a free DVD player and all together it costs about the same as a DVD player anyway? Holy shit count me in. People went nuts for it. DVDs were a really big deal too as VHS sucked donkey cocks in hell. DVDs were the new "high def" future and came with massive amounts of free extras, interesting menus with weird pre-rendered gimmicks, etc. that made you feel you were in the hackerman cyber future.

The price drop of DVD players alone was crazy. I remember seeing super cheap top loader ones for maybe twenty quid or so in supermarkets and they worked fine.

>>8063443
>superior multiplat machine.
Why was that the case?

>>8063615
>purchase a video game
>to watch movies
Never happened in this world. Parents would never fall to such thing.
See the flop of Xbox, PS3 (bluray) and Xbox360 HD DVD.

>>8063243
It had more games that didn't suck

>>8063939
The PS3 had more complicated hardware than the Xbox 360. Developers could make games for the 360 more easily than the PS3, which meant better performance

>>8063475
Uh, the reason you can't afford the newer consoles is because of the tarriffs on importing consumer electronics. It's got nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with Sony needing to quadruple the price because your government slaps them with gigantic exporting fees.

>>8063243
I put Gran Turismo 4 in my PS2 and it refused to read it, and then it never let me play a game or watch a DVD again.

>>8063443
>I know the PS3 technically outsold it
This fucking meme again. 360's last numbers were from 2014, PS3's were from 2017. There is no way Sony outsold it during that 3 year period, considering how many fucking E models are out there.

>>8064056
and what's your problem with that? you some filthy globalist?

>>8064232
In case you don't know American games are garbage and they aren't even made in America either

>>8064236
i bet this faggot loves jarpig menu navigation simulators lmao

>>8064032
Didn't the PS3 have a larger library of exclusives?

>>8064264
The PS3’s fortunes really started to turn in fall 2009 when the cheaper slim model launched alongside Uncharted 2. I think prior to that the 360 was unquestionably dominating.

>>8064245
No? I'm a nintentoddler based platformer enjoyer.

>>8063986
Are you insane? A lot of people bought PS2s to use as DVD players. I saw fucking school teachers with PS2s in their classrooms for the DVD functionality.
SAME WITH THE PS3. Tons of people got the PS3 as a cheap blu-ray device.
Are you a zoomer or something?

>>8064746
The PS3’s $600 launch price tag was a big reason it struggled early on against the 360. Maybe when the slim model came out people got it as a relatively cheap blu-ray player.

>>8063243
PS2 launched a year before and had a DVD player at a time where they were very expensive and desirable. Those are two pretty big reasons.

>>8063986
The only accurate thing in this post is that HD DVD failed. It was also an add-on device which never bodes well. The Xbox and PS3 were in no way “flops”.

>>8063243
first on the scene, backwards compatible

>>8063273
>The price of a PS2 was barely above what a DVD player cost in 2000
i forgot about this because 10 years later everything and the kitchen sink played dvds. this was a major selling point

>>8064751
Yeah I'm referring to later on when it seemed like blu-ray had won and the PS3 dropped in price. I was just reacting because Sony selling their console as a media player first has always been their M.O. Even in the Ps1 days

>>8064813
That’s true. The PlayStation brand has always been about being a home media center device.

>>8064813
The PS1 was a pretty cool audio CD player. I loved its visualiser thing and the cheesy effects you could do with it.

What goes for more on the retro market nowadays, The Sega Dreamcast or the Sega Saturn?
It seems like more people care about the Dreamcast + its easier to pirate for. Saturn games are expensive but as far as the console itself I don't know if people really care

>>8063243
I remember friends families bought it because it could play CDs and DvDs for the family in the living room.

>>8064849
Definitely the Saturn because of its cult popularity and I’d imagine it’s increasingly difficult to find Saturn consoles in good working order.

>>8063924
yeah
flash drives weren't jack shit until like 2004 or so, and a lot of computers still didn't have USB ports into the early 00s anyway
I remember spending a maddening amount of money on a 512MB drive (it was like $60 and then I got a $20 rebate off of that), this might have been 2005 or 2006.
at school, I still used floppies (which was miserable, I ended up borrowing a USB Zip drive from my dad at one point because 1.44MB of space was fuck all in the early 2000s), and I remember using a CD-R as a "rewritable" storage medium a few times because it was the cheapest option with the most space, but it had two big issues, where a: every single time you saved or deleted a file, you permanently lost space because you can't update the contents of a CD-R, just write new stuff to the remaining blank space, and b: I could only edit the disc on a machine with a CD burner, so I couldn't edit my school shit at school.

also, it's still weird to me how slowly prices and capabilities change these days with tech shit vs 20 years ago

>>8064232
this would make sense if you had any real local tech industry
protectionism only works if there's something to protect other than the wallets of government officials

>>8064849
Saturn is just as easy to pirate on as Dreamcast these days -- plug in a cartridge, run burned game. In fact, most /vr/ era systems are really easy to pirate on now.
Game prices on Saturn have shot through the roof, apart from hyper-common shit like VF2.

>>8063424
as much as I liked my GC, it was very clear that Nintendo had fucked up

>>8063917
then who was buying the NES

>>8064970
This. Video games were mainstream starting with the NES.

>>8063986
I know people who bought PS3s to get a blueray player into their sound system.
The problem for the PS3 was the economy taking a shit 2 years into its lifecycle and the rise of streaming

>>8063270
this and FIFA, PES, playstation brand and japanese games

It flawlessly carried the PS1's momentum and the DVD player capabilities made it an easy sell to anyone.

>>8064985
Video games were always mainstream. Everyone went to arcades.

>>8065258
Fair point.

>>8064264
Yeah, but that's just because Japan refused to buy the 360.

>>8064962
>also, it's still weird to me how slowly prices and capabilities change these days with tech shit vs 20 years ago
Yeah, why the fuck do blu ray drives cost almost as much as they did 15 years ago? We all know that bullshit about lack of demand is untrue because there actually are a lot of blu ray drives out there, just not in many computers. The actual components aren't expensive to make anymore.

>>8063243
Drramcasts library of games is on par with ps2 plus they had better online titles.

>>8065347
Speaking of which was the better pso or final fantasy 11?

D V D
V
D

>>8065363
P S O
S
O

>>8065347
>Drramcasts library of games is on par with ps2
what level of drugs are you on?

>>8064886
>the Saturn
Depends which "the" you're talking about. In Japan the Saturn "thes" are far more common than the DC "thes". In the US it's the other way around. And it's far more likely for a DC to go bad than a Saturn.

>>8066107
Dreamcast actually pwns the PS2 in terms of arcade/arcade-styled games, which is the best /vr/ genre. PS2 obviously wins in terms of RPGs and moviegames and other casual stuff though.

- GTA III
- Xbox was literally fucking enormous
- Teenagers didn’t want a purple GameCube with with childlike buttons on controller
- DVDs were fucking mind blowing, the leap in fidelity, especially combined with plasma TVs entering the market, was a huge leap forward
- Burning audio CDs was also easy exciting and accessible
- Social media hadn’t turned everyone into fucking faggots or nazis

>>8066107
Dreamcast had the best fighting game in mvc2. Great racers with Daytona. Sonic adventure is better than ps2 platformers. There's no adventure game that matches shenmue. I could go on. You might bring up how ps2 got a lot of dreamcast games but generally they are inferior ports as the ps2 was not up to scratch when it came to porting Sega arcade games.

Remove gta3 from ps2 and you're left with nothing but a DVD player.

>>8066184
The Dreamcast peaked in 2001 and didn't have the processing power or controller interface to keep up with the games coming out for the PS2 in 2002 and beyond. Why do Segafags still keep making this cope that the PS2 library stopped existing after it's first two years of launch?

>>8066201
They are just literally coping.

>>8066201
>peaked
No, it was discontinued. Had it go on ps2, xbox and gc get nothing from Sega improving it even more.

PS2 having a better controller and being more powerful means little when you look at games like Quake 3 and see that its superior on online dreamcast despite being released 5 months earlier.

>>8066201
>The Dreamcast peaked in 2001 and didn't have the processing power
It had a far better GPU than the PS2 to make up for the deficit in processing power.
Reminder: Yu Suzuki stated that Shenmue 2 would have to be downgraded to run on the PS2, which is why it went to Xbox instead.
>or controller interface
Could have been easily remedied by releasing a new controller design like how the Genesis got a 6-button pad, or the Saturn got the NiGHTS 3D controller.
>the PS2 library stopped existing after it's first two years of launch?
Because honestly the PS2's library just isn't all that impressive, my dude.

>>8063986
>See the flop of Xbox, PS3 (bluray) and Xbox360 HD DVD.
damn, this post is stupid

>OG Xbox
didn't play DVD out of the box, you needed the remote (IIRC, this was licensing bullshit, but still)
>PS3
a few crazy people did buy it at launch for video because a standalone BD player was upwards of $500
more sensible people remembered what happened with DVD players, and how quickly prices would plummet
>HD-DVD
wasn't supported out of box on the 360, you needed an attachment

>>8064056
I don't think you understood what I meant, _because_ videogames are so expensive here, most people could only afford easily pirateable consoles, as a way of frontloading the expense onto the hardware and saving on the games themselves.
Hell, over the years, my brother and I casually amassed about 70 Wii games, which would have legally cost about a year and a half worth of minimum wage salary, but by getting them burned from shady shops it cost us about 1/20th of that amount

>>8063359
No it wasn't, this anon is right >>8063364
Some of us are old enough to remember the release. Gamecube was always the budget option.

>>8063478
It blows my mind that anyone even plays that shit.

>>8064187
This.
Poor hardware design and game console failures really helped the Xboxb360 to sell more units than the PlayStation 3.
Also people being banned from Xbox Live console banned for that matter helped the sales too.
All in all microscum is a shitty company and they deserve to be shut down.

>>8063986
i did this and so did most people who's parents had a job

>>8066947
>Also people being banned from Xbox Live console banned for that matter helped the sales too.
Maybe if you weren’t an immature sperg that can’t control yourself from screaming racial slurs in online games, you wouldn’t have been banned.

>>8063314
It was a much cheaper option than buying an Xbox or a Gamecube AND a DVD player.

>>8066961
Xbox could play DVDs though. You had to buy the $20 remote in order to do it but the playback quality was better than what you got on PS2.

>>8066956
They swung the banhammer indiscriminately.
23000 in one day. That helped console sales.
I have a PS3 an 80gb from 2008 that still works to this day.
I bet most xshit owners can't say that.

>>8066971
>indiscriminately
Sure they did.

>>8066972
50 percent failure rate.

>>8067009
Uh huh. You know exactly what you were doing to get banned, anon. You’re not the victim here.

>>8067013
I never owned an Xbox

>>8067021
Then why the fuck did you respond to a conversation that didn’t involve you?

>>8067031
I can respond any fucking conversation I'd like faggot.

>>8066818
Holy based

>>8063243
>Sony enters the video game market
surpassed the veteran Nintendo

>Microsoft enters the video game market
surpassed the veteran Nintendo

Nintenbros? Wtf was that?

>>8068437
Nintendo’s market share was already on a downward trend with the N64. The GameCube could only do games while the other two also played DVDs and appealed to a more grownup demographic.

>>8068481
It was so retarded of Nintendo to do those mini disc things for Gamecube. Less storage, more expensive and it cuts out any possibility of using it as a media player when the others could offer 2 in 1 functionality.

>>8063314
It was cheaper at some point for me because I bought burned games for $5 apiece.

>>8066309
>more sensible people remembered what happened with DVD players, and how quickly prices would plummet
There was also the fact that most people still didn't have HD TV sets to take advantage of the new formats. CRTs were still pretty prevalent until the digital transition in 2009.

>CTRL+F: DVD = 82 found
All these people in this photo were there to buy a PS2, go home and watch movies, not because the Playstation was a cultural phenomenon of gaming industry of the late 90s/early 2000s, right?!
This copium has to stop!

>>8068607
The PS2 had an okay launch lineup and first year of game releases but nothing truly exceptional. It wasn’t until fall/holiday 2001 that it really kicked into high gear. The fact that it doubled as a DVD player was definitely a strong selling point.

>>8068607
>guys in pic are playing Dreamcast
BASED

>>8066149
>Teenagers didn’t want a purple GameCube with with childlike buttons on controller
Anecdotal evidence, but growing up in the 2000s my friends and I all wanted a PS2 or Xbox, while my older teenage cousins all played Melee religiously.

>>8068650
I was in college in the early 00s and Melee was definitely a dorm staple.

>>8068625
yeah people played on more than 1 console.

>>8068756
Not me. Dreamcast was my last console. Fuck the rest of sixth gen and beyond.

>How
Name recognition since the first Playstation was such a success, DVD capability, and by 2001, all the games worth a shit to people were coming out on PS2.

>>8065363
They're both very different games, anon.

>>8068617
I think a lot of the stuff that ended up coming out in 2001 started getting hyped up around 1999 and 2000, so it's safe to say people were hyped for what was to come when getting their ps2.

>>8068829
Sure, I’m just saying there were definitely some dry spells in the first year.

>>8066107
>>8066201
>>8066219
If the Dreamcast got the planned floppy disk drive your life would be fucking over

>>8068905
>floppy disk drive in the time when the industry was beginning to leave floppies behind
Yeah, that would have sold the dreamcast

>>8063243
During ps1 people thought that once N64 came out that it take would over ps1. Next generation everyone thought playstation would be the most popular forever and there never ever be anymore competitors. With xbox 360 it was starting to look like people would just stick with the ps2 and wait for the ps3 but maybe once they heard the price they just went to xbox. There were plenty of debates at the time of people trying to argue that xbox 360 was not that much better.
It was good for its time but who wants to go back to ps2 games these days?

>>8068987
>It was good for its time but who wants to go back to ps2 games these days?

>>8064970
kids

>>8068786
Based. Go out on a high note before it all turned to pure shit.

>>8068617
>okay launch line up
That's being generous. There weren't any games that even showed off its apparently beefy graphics.

>>8068786
Beyond basado

>>8063904
You could attach a screen to that bad boy. I almost got one because of that, and I never wanted a PS product before.

>>8063243
Sony understands that by selling to casual normies you make the most money.

>>8069159
We've had this discussion before. The PS2's launch line up is solid and there were games which showed off the systems power.

>>8069153
>>8069181
>deleted
Jannies are anti-Sega

>>8069781
Which games? Sonic Adventure looked next gen and was fun. What did PS2 have by comparison

>>8069781
I’d say SSX was the most technically impressive of the launch games.

>>8069807
Reality was Dreamcast games looked entirely different from Saturn while most PS2 launch games looked like ps1 games with slightly improved textures.

>>8069806
>>8069807
smuggler's run had massive levels without load screens where you could see far into the distance.

>>8069825
I don’t disagree. The Dreamcast’s main strength imo was having games with really appealing, vibrant colors, especially if you’re running VGA.

>>8069826
That one was pretty cool.

>>8063243
it's interesting to compare sales distribution and growth over time: the PS2 outsold the entire 5th gen and the PS1 outsold the entire 4th gen. then when the 7th gen hit things fragmented.

>>8069887
In 7th gen, Nintendo shilled hard for casuals, and Sony shit the bed hard. Micro$oft had it the best, didn't sell more because japs won't touch baka gaijin hardware.

>>8070679
it's interesting that despite shilling hard for casuals, sales didn't grow that much compared to 5th > 6th gen
i wonder if a big chunk of the PS2's sales were to casuals or kids, then Nintendo took that as well as growing the market as a whole by getting people who'd never owned a console before.

>>8069887
4th and 7th gen confirmed being best

>>8068987
>It was good for its time but who wants to go back to ps2 games these days?
ME

>>8063424
It`s sad the gamecube did so bad because it had the highest quality games over all. Sony's marketting campaign where they called the Gamecube childish also worked really well in the west because of insecure children.

>>8071093
>swimsuit special
very sexist

>>8063243
A more interesting stat would be unique owners. Unfortunately I doubt we could get an accurate version. The PS2 would break frequently but since it was one of the cheaper DVD players people would go out and buy a new one right away.

I knew a few people back then who had 3-5 PS2s over the course of that generation.

I still think unique owners would be higher than gamecube and xbox, but it would be much closer. The PS2 was basically the "casual" family console of the generation like the Wii after it.

>>8064187
microsoft stopped posting numbers when they stopped selling units
on the other hand at the end of its lifespan the ps3 still had some big releases like persona 5

>>8063243
PS2 rode on PSX success of course. What surprises me is that Xbox outsold GC.

>>8071059
No, it was international. US and Japan didn't grow the market that much, rest of the world did.

>>8064746
>I saw fucking school teachers with PS2s in their classrooms for the DVD functionality.

I had this at school too. One of our music teachers actually bought a copy of guitar to play on it on special occasions, it was pretty cool.

FACT: people buying ps2 for the dvd playback is a myth

>>8071420
Fact: you're full of shit.

>>8071275
GameCube didn't have a memorable Mario game and it's biggest claim to fame was a controller that looked like bongo drums.

>>8071443
Fuck the plebs. Sunshine and Wind Waker were some of the best games in their respective series. Not to mention Melee.

The Gamecube's problem wasn't a lack of first party video games. It was everything else. It came to the game late with a retarded mini disc format and an awkward-looking controller. Nintendo had already squandered all of its third party developer relationship, so it had no exclusive deals. Any halfway decent game that made it on the Gamecube made it to the PS2 a few months later.

>>8069887
5th gen was a lot more even at the time than this chart makes it seem. See: >>8063904
Same with the PS2. The last PS2 got manufactured in early 2013 with the PS4 launching later that year.
Even in the 7th gen, the 360 was manufactured in tiny tiny numbers by the time the 360 E-model launched. Where as the PS3 Superslim was manufactured for years afterwards being finally discontinued in 2017.
All these consoles have good reasons for why they're discontinued however. N64 games were barely worth publishing so the console got canned early. Xbox hasn't sold a single console at a profit to this day so it makes sense to cut off as soon as possible.
On the other hand Sony consoles typically break even eventually and start making a profit with every sale, with the exception of the PS3, so it makes sense to keep manufacturing them as long as it's cheaper than tearing down the factory.

>>8071473
Sunshine have such a strong love/hate relationship with players. I always wanted to play it and Windwaker, they looked cool as fuck and fresh, but I never owned a GC.

>>8071473
>Nintendo had already squandered all of its third party developer relationship, so it had no exclusive deals.
There were some. The Capcom exclusivity deal was the biggest one of course and while most of those games did eventually get ported to the PS2, they played better on GameCube. Hell, REmake was exclusive to Nintendo platforms for over a decade.

Then there was also Final Fantasy: the Crystal Chronicles, the only port Skies of Arcadia ever received and Tales of Symphonia which remained GC exclusive for several years.

>>8071608
Oh and MGS: Twin Snakes in a deal with Konami. All in all I’d argue that Nintendo actually made a solid effort to get third parties back on board that gen. The GC just didn’t sell well enough to keep them there though.

>>8071615
One more: the GameCube got a port of Ikaruga while the PS2/Xbox didn’t.

>>8063443
>Plus XBL was hugely profitable for them.

Right after the 360 finished, it became public knowledge that at that point the Xbox division was always in the red. 12 of the 14 candidates for Microsoft CEO had planned to gut it or sell it.

>>8071635
Guess that one billion they were forced to sink into RROD repairs really ate into the profit margins.

>>8071635
No that was well known for years, anybody can read an investor report.

>>8071650
That did set the 360 back but the system did eventually return a small profit. Meanwhile the OG xbox lost $4billion overall. Xbox division spent something like a decade before becoming meaningfully profitable.

>>8071443
>Didn't have a memorable mario game
It had Mario sunshine, Mario Kart Double Dash and fucking Thousand year door

>>8063243
It's rad, the first console with surprise in its pocket, also 3D

>>8071473
honestly this. if Nintendo went mini cd for the 64 then regular dvd for GameCube i that would have seen a lot more success

>>8063243
i bet 70 percentent of that chart is because in the third world was the most pirated system meaning 70 percent of those sales where when the ps3 was out. the ps3 'surpassed' the 360 because all the third world kids ended up buying that cheap sliding doors ps3 as a fifa gta v machine.

"Why buy a console and a separate DVD player when I can buy both at once?" - 100 million people

>>8063986

Blu-Ray never took off to the degree DVD did. It wasn't unpopular, exactly, but the time between it overtaking DVD and the rise of streaming was pretty short.

>>8073009
To this day I can't even tell the difference in dvd and blu ray quality. I HATE some of the blu ray intros that are unskippable. What is this a fucking jrpg?

>>8063243
infkating numbers fuck off...it only sold 135 millions units in a span of 16 years (snoy fags getting butthurt because the switch is reaching the same numbers)

>>8063243
in argentina everybody has one because it was cheap, it was extremely easy to chip and pes retardation

>>8073061
Is there any quality change besides the obvious "we have more space for data"? Isn't this the only restriction? Blu-ray is incredibly inefficient and games should be launched from SD cards, but fucking consoles went the digital route of course, this gen may as well kill half of the physical distribution, next gen will be digital only.

>>8063243
>ps2 played dvd's
>ps2 had one hell of a launch lineup
>ps2 riding the ps1's success
>ps2 agressively pursuing exclusives
>ps2 had backwards compatibility for ps1, so you could flip you ps1 to put money towards the ps2.
>ps2 made for a good budget console, so it was sold in 3rd world countries for an unusually long period of time
>ps3 sold so slowly for 2 years that ps2's kept selling well
>meanwhile the wii made the gamecube obsolete to most people
>360 also effectively replaced the xbox with its own backwards compatibility
>gamecube sales lower due to nintendo losing market share in the 5th gen
>dreamcast for similar reasons but far worse
>xbox is a new competitor, so not as many people are interested

>>8073378
The main thing keeping physical distribution around is retailers paying companies to keep it around.

>>8074037
Proof?

In the developing world it basically came down to "ease of piracy." Gamecube games were way harder to pirate and XBox was too expensive/didn't have brand recognition.

In third-world countries you could literally go to a corner store and buy burned DVDs of PS2 games for roughly a $1 a pop.

>>8063615
>>8063628
So obviously there were really bad, worn, and used tapes out there. But I found later tapes from the 90s looked basically the same as DVDs on a standard CRT TV. DVDs were definitely more convenient and I never bought tapes of my own after I started buying my own movies, but I never really saw a huge difference on the types of TVs we had.

>>8063986
>Thinks the shift from DVD to blueray was the same as VHS to DVD
Also the PS3 was insanely expensive even if you factored int he blueray. It was the #1 thing people complained about. You'd have to have been alive at the time to understand though.

>>8063615
I was never able to record on dvds the same way I could with vhs. I could throw any old vhs tape IN AND RECORD The local football game. Dvd's SUCK!

>>8073770
>ps2 had one hell of a launch lineup
This again.

>>8063986
Congrats, the most zoomer post on the board.
>>8073061
>To this day I can't even tell the difference in dvd and blu ray quality.
You must be fucking blind.

>>8074483
Not him, but Gamestop still exists, and a lot of retail chains still stock vidya, so I wouldn't deny it.

>>8063986
None of those flopped except the Xbox HD DVD drive, also the PS2 was literally everyone's first DVD player (unless you were some richfag or something) when it came out, people did both play vidya and watch movies on the thing. Fuck, some people even ended up complaining when the Wii U couldn't play DVDs and still complain about the Switch not offering Netflix when you can get that shit on a 40 dollar dongle now.
>Parents would never fall to such a thing
You're fucking wrong, I got a PS2 for my birthday around 2001 and sure enough months later my parents were using that shit to watch a movie.

>>8076771
Funny thing is, they still make new DVDs to this day, and sell them in stores alongside bluray, whereas VHS was essentially dead in about 5 after the PS2 brought DVDs playback to the masses

>>8063642
>and had to be flipped to watch a full movie
A few of the earliest DVDs were single layer and also needed to be flipped. If it had extra features, the flip point wouldn't necessarily be at the halfway mark.

It was a fairly short wait for dual layer DVDs to become the standard, however.

>>8063720
I just spent 20 minutes looking and they're going for around $250, chief. Lemme guess, you're talking about off-brand chinese crap?

>>8078640
any device which plays dvd video discs, here were your options in late 2000 for a cheap DVD player. If that's all you cared about, you'd get one of these.

>>8063636
>>8063767
I've had my PS2 since launch and it works like it did day 1

>>8077529
Vhs to DVD quality was a massive step forward. If you think blu ray was just as massive you are the one with vision problems.

>>8073143
Kids love handhelds.

>ps1 stomped its way through the 5th gen with solid mascot-like characters like crash, lara croft, spyro and snake, it was clear those would get sequels on ps2
>2001 alone had MGS2, SH2, FFX among other very strong titles
>it was a DVD player out of the box
>n64 was hot garbage and the GC doubled down on the shit media choice
>xbox was a new player and japs hate burgers
>it ended up having not only the largest, but the best console library of all time
It's pretty simple, really.

>>8078765
>If you think blu ray was just as massive you are the one with vision problems.
Get your eyes checked, Mr. Magoo.

>>8079059
Just admit you've never even seen a vhs tape.

>>8079059
Most people watch netflix on cellphones and can't tell the difference from 720 and 1080 let alone insane autist displays standards.

>>8068437
Dunno but they came back hard with the Wii and beat both

>>8079543
Nobody bought games for the Wii. Once people got tired of wiggle waggle party game, it sat and collected dust

>>8078765
>>8079063
Blu-ray is blatantly a bigger leap when comparing a DVD to a 4K blu-ray. The resolution increase is fucking gigantic. If it's a 1080p blu-ray it's still at least as big of a leap that VHS to DVD was.

Most cunts on here seem to have shitty old LCD displays though, and it's also why so many faggots here think CRT's are still better. They've never used a 120hz 4K OLED TV. And the rest are zoomer trannies with no money that do everything on their useless shitty phones, so apart from massively bringing down the quality of posts on here they also have no clue about any of this stuff or any sort of standards.

>>8079591
On a CRT, you would be hard pressed to notice the difference between a tape and DVD unless the tape was old and worn.
On an HDTV, the difference between DVD and Bluray is massive and noticeable. You can see the texture of the film grain on Bluray...

>>8066956
>if you weren’t an immature sperg that can’t control yourself from screaming racial slurs in online games,
Everyone did that back then. Calling your opponent a nigger as you humped his corpse was one of the main benefits of buying a mic. Really curious what that guy did to get banned. The only thing I remember people getting banned for was modding their console. Xbox online was a bunch of White high school and college kids from around the globe using state of the art technology to have fun killing each other and calling each other nigger. All the Blacks were on PlayStation, and home networking was slightly more complicated than press the hotspot button on your phone. So it was harmless fun.

Part of what helped is that the PS2 had a really long lifespan. It sold roughly 50 million units AFTER the PS3 came out.

>>8071420
I think it happened, but I also think people really overestimate how many people did and how much it drove sales.

>>8063565
>>8063564
It wasn't "hard" per se, more like different because the Gamecube and Xbox had PC-like architectures with standard single core CPUs while the PS2 had a multithread CPU. Hence it was only difficult for being a little ahead of the curve and anticipating multithreading being the norm a few years later.

>>8079556
This.

>>8079556
Sadly the case for a lot of people that never bothered to look past the surface level games in the library. I on the other hand would kill for an Endless Ocean 3.

>>8079556
On the contrary, it’s shocking how many millions of copies certain games sold on the Wii. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games sold like 7 mill. For comparison’s sake, Bloodborne only sold like 3m on PS4.

I think people are overlooking how big of a success the original Playstation was and how much that influenced the success of the PS2.
Just look at >>8069887

Nintendo had completely dropped the ball with the N64 and everyone who had stayed loyal to Nintendo had regretted it by the end. Everyone hates Microsoft, so nobody was interested in the XBox at the time unless you REALLY wanted to play Halo. And Dreamcast was just too little too late.

>>8063243
marketing.