Will Sony discontinue PS2 before Xmas 2010? Or will it keep on selling it, particularly in emerging countries, where it could eventually meet the buying power of middle classes fastly growing in number and income before current gen consoles?

There is an obstacle to this possible ambitious goal, though: due to high piracy rate there, Sony will have to profit on HW too, so it won't be able to cut price very much to hasten the time when PS2 will become affordable for that target. If not feasible, so, it will be the current gen or even the next, when in their late years and cheap, to conquer those markets, in this case Sony would lose a big opportunity to have a huge market all for itself for a few years.

SONY would rather the masses buy a PS2 than a wii or arcade360... so discontinue.. i dont think so. Sell it till it sells.. esp with no PSon1/2 BC on the slims.. the pS2 has another 2 yrs of shelf life...

It still sells considerably well. It would be unwise to cancel the ps2 with the sales still hitting decent numbers

2010 probably

PSOne = 1994-2006

I bet PS2 will last longer than PSOne.

@Orca_Azure and arsenicazure:
It remains to be seen how sales go after this Xmas, but what you two write makes sense, keeping on selling PS2 will at least make some decent revenue for Sony, with high profit margin, if it manages to reach the most ambitious goal before current gen becomes as much affordable, so much the better for Sony, otherwise no harm anyway. A big hit to try with little risk to take.

i think sony needs to put the ps2 to rest, because it hardly has any games coming out for it and no more blockbusters either. i think sony should drop the ps2 to $99 around black friday and sell its remaining stock and focus on just the ps3/psp/psp-go systems. :)

No it deserves to live.

Every single PS3 ever made has PS1 BC.

No. I don't expect them to stop until the systems selling like... 12K a week....

If it's a profitable business, they should keep going.