I got my first DVD player (a Toshiba brand one) for about $200 in fall of 2000 when The Matrix came out, but it was on sale. 

That said if DVD was such a sales driver, why didn't it help the XBox in the same way (it was easy to give it DVD capability) or why didn't the Panasonic DVD GameCube system in Japan do great numbers?

Yep.  I remember this well.  My son accidentally broke the tray to my PS2.  It held in there for a few more months and then just stopped working.  So, I went and got the newer version that had the yellow + in the corner of the box.  I think it just supported progressive scan and a few more video formats.  And that came out in 2003, which is when you could get a DVD player for less than $50.

Seriously XD?

First of all Xbox released a year later and was more expensive than a PS2, secondly by that time it also had a lot of game titles, thirdly if you wanted to watch DVD movies you had to buy a seperate adaptor.... 

Panasonic Q GC did not do great because the time it released their were already +8 million PS2 consoles sold in Japan + it was also not that cheap.   
Why you don't ask yourself, why Nintendo/panasonic still went trough with making a DVD GC if DVD was not that important for PS2 sales? Maybe because a lot of Japanese families reported they got a PS2 in the first year because it was a great family system? It was simply a great gift for parents themself who could watch DVD movies with it and their kids playing games.

This is also true. Lots of times I rented DVDs that wouldn't work. I'd take them back to the video store and sadly get the vhs version. Dark times.

I decided to make this thread because I have noticed a myth being thrown out there as fact on a few threads.  Mainly those talking about the PS2's sales compared to the PS4's.

The myth goes like this...When the PS2 launched in late 2000 WW, it was around the same price as a cheap DVD player, so many just picked it up to have the benefits of a DVD player, that they might decide to occassionally play games on.  It's mainly used as a way to either explain the PS2's success and/or explain why the PS4 can't match the PS2.  There's one big glaring problem with that.  It's a big, fat lie.  Well, at least an ignorance on the subject.

You see, in late 2000, you could pick up a cheap DVD player for around $150, or half the price of a PS2.  Here's a link to a blog where they were looking for the $99 DVD players announced in a Yahoo News article (sadly this is not archived), but only found ones not discounted.  Searching online, they found GE and Zenith models for ~$149, a Samsung for $160, and Walmart had a GE player for $139.  And during the holidays, especially Black Friday, you could pick up one for $99, or 1/3 the price of a PS2.  The site in the first link got a bunch of replies from their readers and wrote another article about the $99 players being available for Black Friday.

This myth gets even sillier the further you look into the PS2's lifetime.  You see DVD players dropped in price quite quickly.  By 2003, they could be bought for under $50.  Keep in mind that this was less than 1/3 the price of the then $179 PS2.  Here is a Black Friday ad from 2004, that advertises a DVD player for under $18.  That's less than 1/8th the price of the then $149 PS2.  This price thing is also silly, as it does not explain why the Xbox, which was the exact same price as the PS2, wasn't also bought as a cheap DVD player.  Are people really going to try and say that a required $30 DVD kit was all that was stopping consumers from buying the Xbox en masse?

There is something else that disproves the DVD player myth.  SW attach ratios.  It's just like how we can prove the PS3 wasn't bought by millions upon millions of for its Bluray player function.  The PS3's SW attach ratio is basically tied with the 360's, which only used a DVD drive.  If there were so many people who bought it for Bluray, the attach ratio would have been MUCH smaller.  Similarly with PS2, its attach ratio would have been much lower if 25M+ of its sales were mainly for DVD use.  Instead it is right there behind the 360 and PS3, with just one less game bought per console, at 10.5:1.  And it's attach ratio is also very similar to the Xbox's.

So, I think it is time to put this ridiculous myth to rest.  It's obvious the PS2 sold so well because it had 3 things most PS systems have.  Great price.  Great 1st party support.  Great 3rd party support.  It's the same reason the PS4 is doing so well.  Granted, I don't think the PS4 will match the PS2, but 100M+ is pretty much guaranteed.  Thoughts?

@ bold

Nope.  You need to look that up, again.  PS2 launch price $299.  Xbox launch price $299.  PS2 price when Xbox launched...$299.  They both cost the exact same.  And they both got cuts to $199, $179, and $149 at the same time, too.  So, price had nothing to do with it. And the adaptor was only $30 and came with a remote.  A mere $30 dollars does not explain the HUGE difference between the two.

1 year headstart?  When has that made a difference?  That didn't help the Genesis, which actually got a 2 year head start, beat the SNES.  It didn't help the 3DO, Jaguar, or Saturn (more like 1/2 a year) beat the PS1, or even the N64.  It didn't help the Dreamcast beat the PS2, or even GC/Xbox.  It didn't help the 360 beat the Wii, or even PS3.  And it definitely didn't help the Wii U beat the PS4, or even XBO.  1 year means nothing if you stop constantly delivering after that year.