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Kyuu on 12 May 2025
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TheRealSamusAran said:
Kyuu said:

The PS2 is older today than the Atari 2600 was when the former was launched, and ended selling over 5 times more. How many Playstation fans gloated about its peak years being higher than 2600? Console sales significance is dictated by the popularity and circumstances of the medium itself. PS2's 160 million impresses more in a sense than today's equivalent. NES's 60 million is much more impressive than 3DS's 75 million. And Atari 2600's 30 million crushes N64 and Xbox Series XS's totals.

A successor's failure or bumpy start don't necessarily equate to higher demand for its predecessor. Unlike the PS2, the once crazy popular DS and certainly Wii didn't have particularly high demand at the end of their generation despite the 3DS's lackluster performance and Wii U's failure. They were never going to have a PS2-like tail. And let's not forget that the "oh so awful" PS3 ended selling nearly as many units as 3DS and Wii U combined.

The Switch covered two huge markets in a time where gaming is massive, it had no competitors in the handheld space. If Soundwave were in the wrong camp (Playstation), he wouldn't be quiet about the "fake/bloated" Switch demand from COVID, and how Playstation consoles were unfairly production capped for 3 years. In my mind, the Switch is definitely the most successful platform of all time due to its record profitability. But you can't really draw meaningful comparisons between it and a super dominant platform from 25 years ago. Gaming is several times bigger today.

The PS2 is worthy of its throne. I hope it retains it for another glorious 25 years of haters being mad salty about it, whining like Gargamel, and blaming the DVD drive!

You, on the other hand, mentioned COVID, at the same time that you minimized all the homes that got a PS2 just because it was the cheapest DVD player in the market.

I also want to point out the flaw of the "gaming is bigger today" argument. Gaming is bigger today because of the mobile market. That's it, that's where most players are, that's where the big bucks are made. If the console market really got so much bigger, then why isn't the PS5 getting anywhere close to the PS2 sales, as the PS4 didn't either. I know many players migrated to Steam, but that's what you get for letting go of your exclusives.

Lastly, I want to point out that, believe it or not, not only mobile is where most players are, mobile is also in competition with all the other platforms, because if before people had to buy a console or a gaming PC for their gaming fix, today many people get their fix from mobile games already. And handhelds are specially affected by the mobile market... Sony literally left the handheld market and blamed it on phones.

Mobile gaming counts. But even when you exclude it, gaming grew massively since the PS2 days and I'm not talking just hardware sales. Modern gamers are willing to spend more time and money on gaming be it in the form of subscription services, expensive consoles/PC/games, mtx, f2p, accessories etc. It's a much bigger industry with multiple big players. Current Playstation, Nintendo systems, and Steam/PC are "each" bigger than the PS2 was in most relevant metrics.  So much has changed since then.

It doesn't matter how much you think mobile phones affected dedicated handhelds, the fact is the Switch is a hybrid that functions as both a handheld and a home console, it benefitted massively from its portability, and I don't mean this as an insult lol. It's hybridness made it an amazing platform, and it does deserve every sale.

The DVD excuse for PS2 sales has always been ridiculous, because the PS2 crushed the direct competition (combined) in software sales as well, this is without counting the (likely) hundreds of millions of pirated games. The PS2 was a phenomenon for its time.

Last edited by Kyuu - on 12 May 2025