Well it's still by far the cheapest system on the market. My coworker just bought one, she was able to get the system bundled with an extra controller and Guitar Hero 3 for less than the price of a Wii.

@leo-j

nicely said man hahhaha so true!

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say it's the best system on the market, barring graphics. But the Wii has shown that graphical prowess doesn't count for much to people so it plus the cheap price shouldn't make this too surprising. Amazing library too.

It seems like the PS2 is still in rather high demand! Is this the only instance where a last-gen console has been selling better than current-gen ones? Or has it happened before?

Actual numbers
PS2 - 351,800
PS3 - 280,800
Xbox360- 254,600

It seems that a lower price tag aand the best library of games bring this to a system, Im guessing ps2 will stay longer than 360 :)

I think its reasonable to assume that 99$ price point helps a bit too...
Sony is not just making money on it; PS2 software is still a lot more lucrative than both PSP and PS3, possibly even if you combine the latter two.
Here in Norway, nearly 50% of game revenue last year was PS2 as far as I remember.

I am extremely happy that the PS2 is still going strong and I think it is a shame that so many people want it to die. While I have a PS3 I still spend the majority of time playing PS2 games such has Suikoden 5, Wild Arms 5, Star Ocean 3, And Tales of Abyss. some of the games that I have been looking forward to on the PS2 for this year include Chaos wars, Arcana Heart, Persona 3:FES, and Mana Khemia.

Y'all know the NES and SNES lasted much longer than this, and in fact the PS1 lasted just short of 10 years... the PS2 is only following footsteps.

The PS1 had only shipped 73 million when the PS2 came out in Japan, and it went on to ship over 100 million, with the last shipment being 1.6 million for the 6 months ending March 2005

In 2003 it was still shipping more than the Gamecube or X-box.

The only sales data VGC has for PS1 is Japan though, which means we don't know exactly how it compares to the PS2 at the same point, but for Japan only it was selling more per week in March 2002 than the PS2 is in March 2008.