you guys are in a gaming website but yet fail to read the articles about 'talk of ps2 games being put on the playstation store'? sony is clearly beginning the first steps in selling ps2 games on the playstation store which means we're getting a backwards compatibility firmware soon ^^

No shortages of either console here. Seems to be a US/North America problem. Perhaps Sony aren't able to produce the quantities of NTSC versions of the machines that demand seems to be needing. They only have a limited number of factores that can produce the hardware, and they need to prioritise production. I imagine there's probably only one PS2 factory still running.

PS2 sells about equal amounts of NTSC vs. PAL units (slightly more PAL units). PS3 sells a lot more PAL units than NTSC units (93K vs 78K in the most recent chart) at the moment, and during the holidays the difference was even greater. Perhaps Sony diverted production to PAL to meet short term demand differentials, and they didn't quite normalise production proportions in time to keep the America's momentum going and account for the PAl territories proportionally faster reduction in demand. Sony might have found they are overstocked in PAL units and understocked in NTSC units. That would be a big embarassment for someone if true. Stumble number 23 for Sony this generation.

Sony did announce that they expect shortages of PS3s in the coming months, could have an affect on PS2 supply as well.

They will possibly end the PS2 sales in America, but they just put it out in brazil and some other high theft types of places just a few months ago so I dont think that they'll pull the plug anytime soon. Even then though, it's seen its better days.

They let the original xbox sell until it sold only 1 SW unit....then it died ;-()

i think its time for sony to retire the PS2. i have to buy one just to have it

At first glance it sounded like another quote from Activison.

Maybe Sony America underestimated demand for them ?

Well the PS2 is very easy to find in Japan. At least the regular black version, the White version and the Silver version PS2's no longer seem to be available, although the JP PS2 site says they are.

I think its about time they kill the ps2 and add backward compatability to the ps3.