PlayStation 2 drops to $100
Posted on March 31st, 2009 – 9:14 AMBy Randy A. Salas
Sony announced this morning that its venerable PlayStation 2 will cost $100 starting Wednesday, down from $130. Now, you might be thinking, “Who cares about the price of 
a 9-year-old video-game system?” Apparently, a lot of people.
Just in February, 131,000 PS2 systems were sold in the United States, according to the NPD Group. That’s less than all other systems, but it’s still a major chunk of change – more than $17 million in sales in one, “slow” month. In fact, about 136 million PS2 systems have been sold worldwide to date. There also are nearly 1,900 games available for the system, many of them selling at bargain used prices.
Translation? The PS2 is cheap home entertainment. And starting Wednesday, it will be even cheaper.
14 Responses to "PlayStation 2 drops to $100"
Of course they can drop the price, when its hard to find new games for the PS2. When is Sony going to drop the price of the PS3 is the real question.
I have a hunch that there will be a PS3 price drop in time for the holiday season.
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Completely agree Randy… I think a $50.00+ drop in the Ps3 will be seen soon. I can also see why the Ps2 is still selling consoles. My Ps2 still has a big library of games, many of them just a couple years old. Granted, they don’t stack up to the Ps3, but as a cabin console it works great. I don’t mind leaving it up at the cabin because if it’s stolen… big deal, I’m down 100 bucks. I think a lot of people have that same logic since it hasn’t been replaced (Ps3) for all that long.
The PS2 will have go down in history as one of the most successful gaming consoles in terms of longevity. Comparing anything to the NES is kinda cheesy, the NES effectively rescued console gaming and started it down the path to becoming the huge industry it is today. But the PS2 essentially uses 1999 technology, and its hardware sales TEN YEARS LATER are actually pretty respectable compared to the PS3. Granted, a great deal of that is due to the low price point, but with a library of thousands of terrific games, the fact remains the PS2 is still a great console, and a great value for kids or other would-be gamers that don’t want to spend $300+ to play games.
PS3 price drop is now on it’s way. It will be more of a big deal so probably e3 expo in July.
The playstation 2 has one of the best libraries of all time. The crummy thing is new PS3’s are not backward compatible :(. The only backward compatible PS3’s are the first that came out. Maybe Sony did it on purpose, they saw how well PS2’s were selling so they cut backward compatibility in order to sell more PS2s.
Still too much for a 9 year old gaming system. It sounds weird that people complain about no backwards compatibility in the PS3. If you have PS2 games it would reason that you have a PS2 console. Why cripple the next generation console by demanding the use of outdated PS2 coding?
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Jon,
It’s not so much that it is not there rather that it was there, but now is not. Personally, I would rather not have my entertainment center littered with gaming consoles, nor do I want to dig out the PS2 anytime i want to pop in Metal Gear Solid 2. It’s all about convenience.
Maybe I can pick one up to play Shadow of the Collosus, Ico, and Silent Hill 3. I bought all of these while borrowing my brother’s PS2 he won from McDonalds years back.
Still seems like a minor complaint Dan. Let’s not forget that the original BC PS2 games on the PS3 were crash prone, artifact full, and almost unplayable. Recoding the games to work with the new PS3 architecture was not effective or affordable for Sony so they discontinued trying to make it work and put their (much needed) resources into improving the PS3 and improving their 3rd party unfriendly PS3 game development packages. Maybe a day late and a dollar short, but imagine how much farther behind the Wii and Xbox 360 the PS3 would be if they had not stopped trying to make it BC.
The linked poll on a favorite gaming system is incomplete. There is no entry for the Xbox 360. The Xbox is the Microsoft equivalent of the PS2.
PS2 was vastly successful and has some of the best to offer in the history of video games. It’s hard to believe it is 9 years old already. When you look at the graphics for games like the Final Fantasies, Kingdom Hearts, Gran Turismo etc the well made games still hold up by today’s standards. It’s a pretty powerful system. I’m still waiting for a price drop or worthwhile game to buy ps3. Some of us got over shoot ‘em ups with Doom and Quake. More variety please.
