Sony sells its 50 millionth PlayStation 2 in North America
By Darren Murph 
posted Jan 14th 2009 8:31PM
posted Jan 14th 2009 8:31PM
Update: We meant 172,000, not 1,720,000.
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172 million more??? someone is shoving in extra zeros somewhere
You beat me to it...
Honestly! I didn't get that stat either!
darn i'm never the first one to catch engadget's silly typos
Either way, last I checked 200 thousand was WAAAAAAY more than 172 million
I was just thinking that 172 million is a staggering number for PS3... then I realized that it took PS2 near a decade to sell 50 million. heh I'm glad I wasn't the only one thrown off.
so i'm guessing it's supposed to be thousand instead of million?
right?
Engadget, where accuracy is prime.
in 2009, who's counting?
but GJ sony! i love my slim! (since it doesnt depreciate anyway @ $129)
Congrats Sony - that's a lot of models.
What are the chances they'll achieve the same with the PS3?
..slim..
(c what i did here?)
Yes, I see what you did there...
I hope so. Here's drinking to a good return on an initial investment. Maybe not but it sure is a great media server. Would be great for games too if I wasn't so cheap.
I see what you did there, pretty smart.
Id praise you more if i didnt love my PS3 so much [=
ya there's definitely a type in there LOL 172 'million' more.
Oh yes, I see. There's definitely a 'type" in there ;-0
You accidentally your comment!
Wow! That's a lot of PS3's sold. Makes the 50 million PS2's sold seem like nothing.
Didn't XP hit in '00 and the iPod come out in '01??
WTF is going on tonight??
...and
"...the iPod, Windows XP and America's current president took their rightful places. "
....really?
...America's current president is in his rightful place?
Yes, his rightful place. The way out!
And Bryan wins the BDS award. Whatever are you people going to bitch about when George Bush is gone?
Rather make that Nick J.....Sorry Bryan.
Both Windows XP and the Apple iPod came out late 2001.
No prob Charles. I don't even know what a BDS is so I ain't sure if you're being sarcastic or not.
I too, have no idea what the BSD award. A quick google search turns up BDS Marketing, and the awards they present to some employees. But I doubt I won one of those.
And:
I won't have to bitch about anything at all...until someone else makes a series of idiotic decisions that ruins the country...thats the whole point...I'm not bitching just for the sake of bitching...
Pretty sure Windows 2000 came out in 2000, not Windows XP...go figure
"In November 2008, 206,000 PS2s were moved in America, while just 172 million more PS3s were sold in the same window."
Am I missing something here?
Yes, the previous 7 comments
what i dont get is wtf they used the word 'window' in there, it just further confused me.
they probably meant 172 thousand more
and I'm not sure I would agree with this one either "America's current president took [his] rightful [place]"
The way PS3 sales have been going, it might have just been 172 more...
My cousins bought one of those.
It sits on their shelf like a little black obelisk of doom.
Funny thing is, they still don't own any PS3 games. None at all. And they're all pretty big gamers on the Wii.
It just sits there... kind of like a shadow... there, but not really "there".
Until someone wants to watch a Blu-ray, that is.
Are you Al Gore?
Engadget = 0
Numbers/Counting = 1
Psh. I'm pretty sure 'numbers' can 'count' higher than 1.
Engadget - 0
Dyslexia - 1
Engadget just divided by 0.
Maybe if Sony adjusted pricing to accommodate both the current competitive marketplace and economic climate they would be able to improve their rate of adoption.
Enough guys, I think they've realized they made a typo.
NO ONE CAN STOP US!!!
Well, they haven't changed it yet as of this post, so no, they haven't realized it yet.
Don't worry, I'm sure its because Murph's head is still tired from CES.
wow 172 million more?
didn't know the wii had competition.
The PS2 is one of the biggest contributing factor for the sluggish PS3 sales. With Singstar and other fun games there is very little justification for non-traditional gamers to buy the much more expensive PS3. Even hardcore gamers can easily satisfy themselves with an Xbox 360 as has many titles that are no longer exclusive to the PS3. Not to mention PGR3 and Forza which are great racing games while the new Gran Turismo is taking half a decade to be released. And oh, Bluray is is now a dead benefit as the prices for standalone players have rocked dropped during the recent 6 months and by the end of the year Bluray players will be much more affordable.
In order for the PS3 to remain competitive Sony has to do something drastic as the Bluray novelty has complete worn off and the console and left with no major competitive advantage at the price its sold at.
I ain't up on all the new $200 Blu-ray players cause I own the PS3 but don't these 'cheap' players skip out on a lot of the features like the 2.0 profile and are missing the TrueHD compatibility.
The PS3 makes a great media center. Toss in a $200 Blu-ray player and a standalone media player and you're looking at $350-$400 spend.
I do agree. For me, the only thing that makes me THINK about buying a PS3 is GT5. And only when I'm rich enough to get a true-hd plasma. I still play GT4 everyday on my PS2 :) And it is a great videogame, and more if you think it is some 9 years old.
BTW, the 42 million in america...well, much of this 42 million was exported to Brazil :) Here, almost all homes has at least one (!) PS2 :oD
@ Bryan: Players that have a list price of $200 are crap... but a lot of the better name brands like Sony and Samsung have been seeing players on sale around/under the $200 mark since november... soon enough the new models will come out with an even lower list price, meaning lower sale prices.
Yeah, Sony shot themselves in the foot when they insisted on the blu-ray player as the premier feature in the PS3. What they did so well when they introduced the PSX to the world, even when it seemed like suicide to face giants like Nintendo and Sega was produce an affordable console that had a great library and was relatively easy to program for. Hell, they even made it affordable for anyone to program for the Playstation (Net Yaroze).
Now they've made it clear that they're far less concerned about what people want in a game console, but what Sony wants for technology, and that's to be the dominant force behind a new media format. They chose the wrong time to introduce Blu-ray, though. High Definition streaming is quite possible now and network capable consoles without mechanical drives will very probably be the future of all consoles. Microsoft made a very wise decision in working with Netflix to bring their service to the 360. I've watched very many HD programs on my 360 now and have only been using the service for the past week or so. I can safely say that I don't need Blu-ray for HD content now.
Bryan: PS3 is a decent BluRay player but quite a few of all the players just under 300 dollars/euros offer better performance than the PS3 i.e better sound, colours, clarity, sound support and image.
In A.D. 2101, 172 million PS2s were sold.
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ahh, I feel dizzy!
Jesus christ. Proof read your shit.
Why would they proofread their shit when they could be proofreading their articles?
...Jesus doesn't make typos...
..even tho he types like 500 wpm...
this is entirely irrelevant but my name is Jack Baker... weird
holy shit there's a smiley face in your coffee!
Jesus works for gizmodo.
Feels like im in /b/ right now @_@
You're in /i/.
50 million?!?!?!?!thats more than the iphone.,.,
That many and they still can't turn a profit.
I'm the real Jack Baker
PS3 has sold more units in 2 years than the Xbox 360 did in 2 years, at a higher price with more competition and more editors trying their best to spin negative PS3 news. I don't remember any claims of sluggish 360 sales November 2007 but maybe you were preoccupied with the Red Ring of Death.
And how many of those 360 sales are due to repeat buyers who are on their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th 360?
Now that I think of it, I've owned 2 PS3's and neither of them were really sales. The first one I bought new but I found it on craigslist so I think the dude stole it cause it was CHEAP! And I traded that for a used 20GB version. No love from me although I love my PS3.
1. Post a source before stating something like that..
2. Less trivial, but which two years are you comparing? Are these the first two years of each console, because that I would find surprising. If it's just the past two years, did you stop to consider that maybe MS has already largely saturated their install base, and thus the 'potential' sales are far less than Sony where the PS3 is still a 'new' item.
Ok the number 172 is so messed up I cannot even come up with something I think they meant... maybe they meant 1.72 million? That makes the most sense.
Replace "million more" with "thousand" and it all makes sense. PS2 was still outselling PS3 at that point.
Maybe the map that stole the Sony Ericsson phones has a hand in that 172 million. Or something.
All those new PS2 owners with no plans to get a PS3 any time soon!!! Sony is fighting for sales against its self.
I have resisted the urge to post on Engadget and bash the authors for their mistakes, but this is simply crazy. The error in this post goes way beyond a typo and none of the posters seem to have noticed it (at least when I started typing this post).
The linked article states that in November, Americans bought 206,000 PlayStation 2's and that 378,000 PlayStation 3's were sold in November (presumably by Americans as well, although not explicitly stated). The Engadget writer incorrectly interpreted the article as saying a total of 378,000 PlayStation 2's and 3's were sold in November and thus inferred that 172,000 PlayStation 3's were sold in November. As everyone else noticed, the author ended up with an extra three zeros and inflated the number to 172 million units.
In the past, people have complained at how slow Engadget posts news sometimes. There's so much information these days that we can't expect to get all news instantaneously. I'd much rather wait an extra day or two and get more accurate reporting! My personal opinion is that Engadget provides two major servies. First, it is a hotspot for information. It features its own articles and provides links to other articles. Second, for those of us who are too busy to read each and every article, Engadget weeds through the fluff and gives us the gist of the artciles it links to. If Engadget cannot accurately report the news, then it loses much of its value!
Great. Well written. Accurate. Total bullshit.
Everyone has figured out the error. Yourself included. Everything is right except the number of zeros. Yes, they had a brain fart, a fuck up, but nothing beyond that is inaccurate. If you can't get the news because of one glaringly obvious and totally irrelevant mistake then you should give up on all news altogether. Or not, since really you're probably just out trolling for a reason to bitch and offer yourself as superior to others in a position of quasi-respect. Go blow yourself, you're everything that's wrong with America.
@Spartacus
I'm surprised no one said anything about the obscure spacing before and after the slash. Guess by the fifth or sixth comment everyone realized the cool thing to do was to talk about the "million".
It's rather amusing how much so many loathe when there is an spelling or grammatical error in a post, yet they still come flocking back to read more. I guess despite those foul-ups, Engadget is still better than the tech news alternatives.
Say the estimate of 172,000 was a correct number, the author is indeed showing that the PS3 did outsell the PS2 by MORE than 172,000 units. The key word in the article being MORE. He never said they sold 172,000 PS3, he said 172,000 more than the PS2.
@Jupiter you're right it's wrong, but easily explainable. People hate squiggly red lines and far too many spell checkers return things like that as a misspelled word. The reason nobody commented on it was because it's only the stupid that complain about the fuck ups, and it's only the big fuck ups that the stupid catch. You, my friend, are apparently neither stupid nor what is wrong with the world. Big ups.
(Although you should totally reread your last paragraph and curse Engadget for not having an EDIT button.)
This guy was drunk or something, what's the 172 millions come from. I thought ps2 is just sold the 50th millions unit.
Oy vey enough already! And I'm not even Jewish!
The Prophecy! It's true!
THATS OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
9000!?!?!?!?!?
...
I had totally forgotten how clunky looking the original PS2 was.
a. Yes we keep coming back, because it's so much damn fun pointing out the errors of wannabe "journalists"
b. yes, we are going to pick on this error... a wrongly quoted number is a big deal. A typo is one thing... u kin missspell all yu wont as long as the massage is the same... you get it? A wrong number changes the message. Let me provide an example: "Approx. 6 hundred Jews were killed in the holocaust" VS "Approx. 6 million Jews were killed in the holocaust". Yeah, it DOES make a difference, even when obviously an error. Or even better: "Apple's stock fell 60 points today"
c. Sony is most likely very happy about the error. Nothing like word of mouth... "hey, did you hear, the PS3 sold 175 gabillion in November..."
d. Article posted at 8:30PM last night... 12 hours ago and still no one bothered to correct it? What the hell, blog writers don't wake up early like the rest of us? lol.
e. Yes, engadget is ONE of the best sites for tech news... but I think it's safe to say we're all here to look at the pretty pictures of laptops and cell phones and not really invest too much credibility in their words. Seriously.
f. And of course some jerk had to mention the Xbox 360. Turn it into a fanboy war, of course. We're not tired of that at all.
173 million?????? What math class did you go to?? lol lol lol lol
The last time I checked, we wanted a thing that played games. I don't care about their rubbish marketing about how much more value you'll get with the PS3 at $400. Some people don't care if it plays Blu-ray discs. They want it to play games. That's about it.
I'm guessing the PS3 might do even worse than the Xbox 1 did.
The first two PS2's that I bought in 2002 (in two different states no less) were not able to read DVD's, anyone else have that problem?
GOOD LORD!! IT'S OCTOBER 26 2001!!! NOT 2000!!
We were told a few weeks ago that the PS2 would be discontinued... at least no more new games would be coming out in order to phase it out and promote the PS3 around the end of this year. Has anyone else heard this?
173 million?????? What math class did you go to?? lol lol lol lol