The PlayStation 2 (PS2) (Japanese: プレイステーション2) is Sony's second video game console, the successor to the PlayStation and the predecessor to the PlayStation 3 (which is to be released in November 17th, 2006 in Japan and North America, and March 2007 in Europe). Its development was announced in March 1999, and it was first released in Japan on March 4, 2000, in North America on October 26, 2000 and in Europe on November 24, 2000.
The PS2 is part of the sixth generation era, and has become the fastest selling gaming console in history, with over 105 million units shipped worldwide by March 31, 2006. Upon its release, the PS2 set the mark of being the fastest selling console at launch, breaking the record held previously by the Sega Dreamcast. As of July 2006, the PS2 still outsells its competition, the Xbox, Xbox 360, and Gamecube, in North America and Japan.
Manufacturer Sony Computer Entertainment
Type Video game console
Generation Sixth generation era
First available Japan= March 4, 2000
USA=October 26, 2000
EU=November 24, 2000
UK=November 30, 2000
CPU 128-bit "Emotion Engine" clocked at 294 MHz
Media DVD, CD
System storage memory card, hard drive
Controller input DualShock 2
Connectivity Ethernet/Modem adapter.
Online service Game-supplied, Central Station
Units sold 106.23 million shipped worldwide.
The PlayStation brand's strength has led to strong third-party support for the system. Although the launch titles for the PS2 were unimpressive in 2000, the Christmas season of 2001 saw the release of several best-selling and critically acclaimed games. Those PS2 titles helped the PS2 maintain and extend its lead in the video game console market, despite increased competition from the launches of the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube. In several cases, Sony made exclusivity deals with publishers in order to pre-empt its competitors. Critically acclaimed games on the machine include the Grand Theft Auto series and the ever-popular Final Fantasy (Square Enix) series, the latest three Metal Gear Solid titles, Devil May Cry and Devil May Cry 3, the SSX series, latest three Ace Combat titles, the Square Enix/Disney collaboration Kingdom Hearts, and first-party Sony Computer Entertainment brands such as the Gran Turismo, SOCOM, Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter series, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War and the Everquest spin-offs Champions of Norrath and Champions: Return to Arms, the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Series which has five games on the PS2, and of course the Tony Hawk series. The PS2 has also been the home to many music games such as the latest Dance Dance Revolution games, and the newer rock game Guitar Hero.
By the end of June 2006, there were 7,798 PS2 titles released worldwide, accounting for cumulative production shipments of 1,080 million units. With backwards-compatibility to PlayStation games, the PS2 had a released software library of 15,687 titles after 6 years and 118 days, although the region-coding limits this quite severely, to 4,348 PS2 titles and 4,915 PS1 releases in Asia; 2,199 and 1,639 in Europe; and 1,251 and 1,335 in North America.
The PS2 hardware can read both compact discs and DVDs. It is backwards compatible with older PlayStation (PS1) games, allows for DVD Video playback, and will play PS2 games off cheap CD-ROM discs or higher-capacity DVD-ROM discs. The ability to play DVD movies was an added incentive for consumers to be able to justify purchasing the PS2 (The MSRP was $300 in October 2000). The PS2 also supports PS1 memory cards (for PS1 game saves only) and controllers as well. The PS2's Dual Shock 2 controller is essentially an upgraded PS1 Dual Shock; analog face, shoulder and D-pad buttons replaced the digital buttons of the original.
When it was released, the PS2 had many advanced features that were not present in other contemporary video game consoles, including DVD-playback functionality, USB support, and IEEE 1394 expansion ports. It was not until late 2001 that the Microsoft Xbox became the second console to include USB support (USB Revision 1.1 [aka, Full-Speed USB], with a proprietary Microsoft Xbox shaped socket) and DVD playback capabilities.
Note: Compatibility with USB devices is dependent on the software supporting said USB device. For example, the PS2 BIOS will not boot an ISO image from a USB flash drive, or operate a USB printer, as the machine's operating system does not include this functionality. By contrast, Gran Turismo 4 is programmed to save screenshots to a USB mass storage device, or print images to certain USB printers.
Support for original PlayStation games was also an important selling point for the PS2, letting owners of an older system upgrade to the PlayStation 2 and keep their old software, and giving new users access to older games until a larger library was developed for the new system. As an added bonus, the PS2 had the ability to enhance PlayStation games by speeding up disc read time and/or adding texture smoothing to improve graphics. While the texture smoothing was universally effective (albeit with odd effects where transparent textures are used — white borders would be seen around certain 2D pictures used to create objects called 'sprites'), faster disk reading could cause some games to fail to load or play correctly.
A handful of PlayStation titles (notably Metal Gear Solid: Special Missions) fail to run on the PS2 at all (Special Missions fails to recognise Metal Gear Solid at the disk swap screen, for example). This problem appears to have been rectified in the slimline versions of the PS2, where most of the previously unplayable PS one games can now be played. It is a common misconception that disk swapping in a game (for example, for multi-disk games or expansion packs) is not possible on the PS2 without modifying the console. The anomalous failure of the above title at its disk swap screen may have given birth to this rumor. Software for all PlayStation consoles contains one of four region codes: for Japan and Asia: NTSC/J, North America: NTSC-U/C, Europe and Oceania: PAL, and China: NTSC/C.
With the purchase of a separate unit called the Network Adaptor (which is built into the Slimline model), some PS2 games support online multiplayer. Instead of having a unified, subscription-based online service like Xbox Live, online multiplayer on the PS2 is split between publishers and run on third-party servers. However, this comes at a price as any connection can connect to the Internet with a PS2, resulting in lag whenever slow connections are present. Most recent PS2 online games have been developed to exclusively only support broadband Internet access. Xbox Live exclusively requires a broadband Internet connection.
All newer online PS2 games (since 2003) are protected by the Dynamic Network Authentication System (DNAS). The purpose of this system is to prevent piracy and online cheating. DNAS will prevent games from being played online if they are determined to be pirated copies, or if they have been modified. Recently, however, there are methods of getting around this protection by modifying some files on the pirated game.
Sony released a version of GNU/Linux for the PS2 in a package that also includes a keyboard, mouse, Ethernet adapter and hard disk drive. Currently, Sony's online store states that the Linux kit is no longer for sale in North America. However as of September 2006, the European version was still available, but it is now only sold as just the Linux software on a DVD and with a monitor cable. The kit boots by installing a proprietary interface, the Run-time environment which is on a region-coded DVD, so the European and USA kits each only work with a PS2 from that region.
In Europe and Australia, the PlayStation 2 comes with a free Yabasic interpreter on the bundled demo disc. This allows simple programs to be created for the PlayStation 2 by the end-user. This was included in a failed attempt to circumvent a UK tax by defining the console as a "computer" if it contained certain software.
A port of the NetBSD project is also available for the PS2.
It is also possible to listen to MP3 music and watch DivX movies with homebrew programs running in consoles that have a modchip installed or with network software like GameShark's Media Player.
The PlayStation 2 has undergone many revisions, some only of internal construction and others with substantial external changes. These are colloquially known amongst PlayStation 2 hardware hackers as V0, V1, V2, etc., up to V16 (as of 2006).
The specifications of the PlayStation 2 console are as follows, with hardware revisions:
Emotion Engine CPU
Graphics Synthesizer GPU
I/O Processor (PlayStation 1 CPU) I/O BusCPU: 128 bit "Emotion Engine" clocked at 294 MHz, 10.5 million transistors
System Memory: 32 MB Direct Rambus or RDRAM (note that some computers use this type of RAM)
Memory bus Bandwidth: 3.2 GB per second
Main processor: MIPS R5900 CPU core, 64 bit
Coprocessor: FPU (Floating Point Multiply Accumulator × 1, Floating Point Divider × 1)
Vector Units: VU0 and VU1 (Floating Point Multiply Accumulator × 9, Floating Point Divider × 1), 128 bit
Floating Point Performance: 6.2 GFLOPS (single precision 32-bit floating point)
3D CG Geometric Transformation: 66 million polygons per second
Compressed Image Decoder: MPEG-2
I/O Processor interconnection: Remote Procedure Call over a serial link, DMA controller for bulk transfer
Cache memory: Instruction: 16KB, Data: 8KB + 16 KB (ScrP)
Graphics: "Graphics Synthesizer" clocked at 147 MHz
Variable from 256x224 to 1280x1024 pixels
4 MB Embedded DRAM video memory
DRAM Bus bandwidth: 47.0GB per second
DRAM Bus width: 2560-bit (composed of three independendent buses: 1024-bit write, 1024-bit read, 512-bit read/write)
Pixel Configuration: RGB:Alpha:Z Buffer (24:8, 15:1 for RGB, 16, 24, or 32-bit Z buffer)
Dedicated connection to: Main CPU and VU1
Sound: "SPU1+SPU2" (SPU1 is actually the CPU clocked at 8 MHz)
Number of voices: 48 hardware channels of ADPCM on SPU2 plus software-mixed channels
Sampling Frequency: 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz (selectable)
Output: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound, DTS, later games achieved analog 5.1 Surround sound through Dolby Pro Logic II
I/O Processor
CPU Core: Original PlayStation CPU (MIPS R3000A clocked at 33.8688 MHz or 37.5 MHz)
Sub Bus: 32 Bit
Connection to: SPU and CD/DVD controller.
Interface Types: 2 proprietary PlayStation controller ports (250KHz clock for PS1 and 500KHz for PS2 controllers), 2 proprietary Memory Card slots using MagicGate encryption (250KHz for PS1 cards, up to 2MHz for PS2 cards), Expansion Bay (PCMCIA on early models for PCMCIA Network Adaptor and External Hard Disk Drive) DEV9 port for Network Adaptor, Modem and Internal Hard Disk Drive, IEEE 1394 (only in SCPH 10xxx - 3xxxx), Infrared remote control port (SCPH 5000x and newer),[14] and 2 USB 1.1 ports with an OHCI-compatible controller.
Disc Drive type: 24x (PlayStation 2 format CD-ROM, PlayStation format CD-ROM) 4x (Supported DVD formats) Region-locked with anti-copy protection (Can't read "Gold Discs" aka normal CD-ROMs)
Supported Disc Media: PlayStation 2 format CD-ROM, PlayStation format CD-ROM, Compact Disc Audio, PlayStation 2 format DVD-ROM (4.7 GB), DVD Video (4.7 GB). Later models are DVD-9 (8.5 GB Dual-Layer), DVD+RW, and DVD-RW compatible.
Price history
North America
US$299.99 (October 26, 2000, Launch Price) (CAD$449.99)
US$199.99 (May 14, 2002) (CAD$299.99)
US$179.99 (May 13, 2003) (CAD$249.99)
US$149.99 (May 11, 2004) (CAD$179.99)
US$129.99 (April 20, 2006) (CAD$139.99)
Japan
JP¥39,800 (March 2000, Launch Price)
JP¥35,000 (June 29, 2001)
JP¥29,800 (November 29, 2001)
JP¥25,000 (2002)
JP¥19,800 (November 13, 2003)
JP¥17,800 (June 2004)
Open price (November 3, 2004, SCPH-70000)
JP¥16,000 (September 15, 2006)
Taiwan (Republic of China)
NT$10,900 (January 24, 2002, SCPH-30007, Launch Price)
NT$ 7,980 (January 1, 2003, SCPH-30007)
NT$ 6,980 (2003, SCPH-39007)
NT$ 6,980 (October 10, 2003, SCPH-50007)
NT$ 6,480 (January 1, 2004, SCPH-50007)
NT$ 5,888 (June 1, 2004, SCPH-50007)
NT$ 5,888 (November 3, 2004, SCPH-70007)
Philippines As of June 2006, shop bought warrantied units of PlayStation 2 Slim (SCPH-70006) run around US$ 217. A recent month long promo of a popular console shop offers trade-in of working or non-working PlayStation console to a brand new PlayStation 2 Slim for US$ 142.
Australia
AU$749.95 (Original Price; the price begun to drop within weeks of its launch)
AU$249.95 (Slim PS2 Launch Price)
AU$199.95 (June 1, 2006 Price Drop)
Russia
RUR 4700 (current)
Europe
€129,99 (August 23, 2006) (price drop valid for all Europe)
United Kingdom (including VAT, currently 17.5%)
GB£299.99 (November 24, 2000, Launch Price)
GB£199.99 (September 26, 2001)
GB£169.99 (September 1, 2002)
GB£139.99 (October 1, 2003)
GB£104.99 (August 18, 2004)
GB£94.99 (August 23, 2006)
Germany
DEM 869 [EUR 445] (Launch)
EUR 129,99 (current)
Poland
PLN 2,599,00 zł (starting)
PLN 549,00 zł for Black Slim and 599,00 zł for Silver Slim (current)
Finland
Eur 500 (Launch)
Eur 149 (current)
Republic of Ireland (including VAT, currently 21%)
IR£ 379.99 (€ 482.58) (Launch)
€149.99 (Early 2006)
Middle East (in Saudi Riyals)
SAR 2200 (Launch) US$550
SAR 1200 (September 2002) US$450
SAR 450 (current) US$150
Turkey
YTL 370 (August 2006) US$255
Owners of early PS2 models purchased from launch until spring 2002 commonly reported faulty optical drives in their consoles. The earliest drives suffered from a constantly misaligning laser lens but later defects were the result of a shift in voltage to the laser itself. The first problem was relatively easy to remedy, but it required opening the machine's casing and tweaking a cog that controlled the lens' distance from the discs it was supposed to read, thus voiding the warranty. This usually didn't matter, as in most cases the warranty already had expired by the time such problems began to appear. The second fix involved the use of an oscillator. As time went on, more and more drives began breaking down and a class action lawsuit was filed against Sony. They had the option of either paying the requested fines in damages, or offering free repair and replacements at their discretion. Sony chose the latter and, until February 2005, they honored their agreement. In the UK owners suffering from this flaw must pay Sony £50 (as of spring 2005) to get their machines repaired.
A second lawsuit is being filed against Sony for all of the above, plus claims that defective hardware is damaging media discs. The first hearings were set to commence in April and May, 2005.