Sony sells its 50 millionth PlayStation 2 in North America
By Darren Murph 
posted January 14th 2009 8:31PM
posted January 14th 2009 8:31PM
Update: We meant 172,000, not 1,720,000.
posted January 14th 2009 8:31PM
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A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
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A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI A MILLI
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