Seems like everyday I see post saying the PS2 was for everyone and how all Ninty did was take the casual market from Sony. I have a question though, what proof do we have of how well the PS2 did with the casuals? I honestly dont it, the PS2's casual games did horrible (compared to the Wii's atleast) and hardcore games sold 10 times as much. Wii games have sold as much as CoD on both 360 and PS3 combined. What proof do we have of part of the PS2's base being casual when majority of its casual games did horrible?

       Honestly I think people are confusing the PS2's incredible sells with casual appeal. What the PS2 really looks like is a combination of the 360 and PS3 with alittle Wii thrown in. Its other factors are being successful in Japan, and being released in many more countries than the other platforms. The PS2 surely wasnt for everyone(maybe all types of core gamers) and surely didnt reach the userbase the Wii did.

Agreed

Lots of people I know who I wouldn't traditionally call videogamers progressed from PS2 -> Wii. Mostly girls, if I'm being honest. In some cases, it was their siblings owning a PS2 and then them choosing to buy a Wii, but I knew a lot of them who actively bought a PS2 too.

Idk. Certainly in my circle of friends it seemed that people who didn't particularly follow videogames owned a PS2. Whether that's the general trend across the world, I have no idea.

The PS2 wasn't for everyone. I had a PS2, but no GC or Xbox. Now I own an Xbox 360 but no Wii or Ps3. The reason why the PS2 had such great sales was that the fact that it was the only great console on the market. The Gamecube wasn't that great. The original Xbox looked like a tank (and was built like one too) and nobody liked the look of it or couldn't trust a new company in the gaming market.

The proof lies everywhere. The PS2 had casual and hardcore gamers. Now the Wii has the casual players (Xbox has some because of Kinect). The PS3 and the Xbox 360 are pretty much even when it comes to the hardcore gamers.

My brother who is a casual bought a ps2. I think the ps2 was the casual gamers console because 1) the library was the biggest so anyone could find any type of game they wanted 2)it had a dvd player so you could both play games AND watch movies which made it more useful than the gamecube. I think the dvd player clearly clinched it - when I remember talk about the ps2 it was generally as the ps2 being a game AND dvd player. With regards to the gamecube, it only was talked about as a game player.

DVD player was a selling point at launch, Eyetoy, Singstar, Guitar Hero, etc.

It just did "Everyone" a lot better than Wii did.

ps2 released after the console which brought gaming back to the masses the ps1.

it would have done great regardless, but it ushered in a cheap DVD player a new way to watch films without the need to upgrade your telly, it really did release at the right price and right time.

although i was an xbox gamer last gen, the ps2 really had most of the games and i guess you could say it was a console for everyone as nearly everyone bought one.

i believe sony can replicate that again and would have done so this gen had it not been for the overengineering of the ps3 it was simply to costly, if ps4 launches £299 £249 they will grab huge marketshare back.

I am someone, the PS2 wasn't for me. There you go!

The PS2 was for everyone because it had no real competition. Most core and casual gamers owned one.

No, I think that casual titles did well enough on PS2. The thing, though, is that the Wii had some casual titles that sold truckloads, while the PS2 had truckloads of titles that sold some puny amount.
The motto of Playstation consoles in general and especially the PS2 is "quantity over quality". (By quality, I mean sales appeal or whatever you want to call it and not actual "quality".) The PS2 sold tons of casual games that probably went under the radar individually, but collectively made for a huge amount of software sales.
Obviously, though, your argument has some merit as a lot of Wii's casual audience was new to gaming this generation and most of them weren't by any means "inherited" from the PS2.