HappySqurriel on 29 February 2008
The PS2 was so popular because:
- It was affordable to the average household from day 1 ($300), and after 18 months was affordable to the majority of households ($200). (Note: American/European timeframe)
- It lacked strong competition until it was in a "dominant" position; by the time the XBox and Gamecube appeared on the market Sony had sold nearly 20 Million consoles and their big named games (Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, and Grand Theft Auto) were being released at an alarming rate.
- People bought a PS2 because their friends owned a PS2; when a group of friends were sitting around talking about videogames they tended to talk about PS2 games because they all owned a PS2, their friends who didn't own videogame systems tended to buy a PS2 because of the (overwhelming) dominance of PS2 ownership of their friends.
- DVD was the hot product on the market BEFORE the PS2 was released; DVD was launched in 1996 and the combination of no additional hardware needed to gain the benefit of DVD, the massive improvement in convenience of the format, the obvious improvement, and the release of several visually "amazing" movies (the Matrix and the Fifth element to name a couple) made DVD the hot product of 2000, 2001 and 2002 (when it eventually took 50% of the market in late 2002).
None of these factors apply to the PS3, it started at far too high of a price and will (likely) be out of the price range of most consumers for the majority of the generation, it is facing two tough competitors who have the lead on it, the PS3 is not the hot gaming system so it doesn't gain the benefit of everyone owning one, and Blu-Ray will (likely) not match the popularity of DVD (at the launch of the PS2) until 2010 or 2011.
