PlayStation 2 turns 9 years (sales in Europe began on Nov. 24, 2000, in Japan – March 4). It seems that the title of the most popular consoles of today should get all this product is Sony. Despite the fact that the shops have 3 years as a range diversify the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii, the new generation failed to push PS2 in a remote and forgotten corner of the consumer market. Month after month, sales of the device described by the six-digit number – 146 thousand units in September in the U.S. alone, according to NPD Group, and there is no reason to believe that about half a thousand game developers for the platform will stop as soon as possible to spend efforts on new video entertainment.
For the most part well formed, because for millions of people in computational power a PS3 or Xbox 360, thanks to which they demonstrate the “photo-realistic” graphics, is not worth a few hundred dollars. For much less money, they believe, PS2 offers not much worse possibilities. It says one of the console owners, who bought it in 2001, it still takes place in my heart – so many great games with the possibility of repetition. I’m not so interested in the outstanding performance figures, graphics, which makes the games look like movies, or other performance exceeding all limits. If over the game worked well, it is interesting and gives the desired emotions, I will not leave her again. ” According to Sony, in each of the three American families have PS2, but globally there are 140 million copies of the console. To date, was released about 10 thousand games for it, while those of the United States bought more than half of their copies. Most Popular: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – sold 18 million worldwide since October 2004; Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec – 12,89 mln from July 2001; GTA: Vice City – 14,2 mln from October 2002 year; GTA III – 11,6 mln from October 2001; Gran Turismo 4 – 10.36 million in February 2005. Below is a mark of 10 million arranged Final Fantasy X, Need for Speed: Undercover, Need for Speed: Undercover 2, Medal of Honor: Frontline, and Final Fantasy XII.
“I I think we are all a little surprised that the set of technology that was introduced 9 years ago, is still popular – analyst of the Electronic Entertainment Design and Research Divnich Jesse (Jesse Divnich). – What is Moore’s Law? power of technology doubles every 18 months.Therefore, in the technological sphere survive 9 years – an incredible success, which the Sony can be proud. ” Specifications PS2 hardware from the height of today’s day did not cause the desire to call them in any way relevant time: processor development by Toshiba and Sony Emotion Engine on the MIPS architecture with a frequency of 294 MHz (299 MHz in the new models) and 10.5 million transistors 32 MB RAM RDRAM, Graphics Synthesizer GPU 147 MHz, 4 MB of video memory, connectors USB 1.1. CPU performance in floating point operations – 6,2 Gflops. For comparison – the characteristics of the PS3: CPU Cell 3,2 GHz, 256 MB of XDR DRAM, GPU 550 MHz on the architecture of NVIDIA G70, using 256 MB of GDDR3 memory at 700 MHz. CPU performance in floating point operations – 204 Gflops. Plus Interfaces Bluetooth 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0, HDMI, Wi-Fi (in some models).
According Divnich, not least the popularity of the factors are the cost – about $100 – and the availability of DVD-player. For the console to perform other functions in addition to running games proved to be very handy. And, of course, continue to produce a game is a weighty argument. According to the analyst, PS2 owns only 4% in the structure of the profit Sony, derived from the direction of video entertainment. At a price of $100 profit margin is relatively small, but the reason for support console company in that it demonstrates the level of the brand, and the moment of change of the old generation console on the PS3, or PlayStation Portable, sooner or later will still occur.
Whether good fortune is waiting for the PS3 and Xbox 360? For many years, Sony was of the view that its video game consoles have a 10-year life cycle. Concerning the “hero for the day, no doubt to overcome this mark is no reason. As for the PS3, it just three years, although the industry is not short term. But as Nintendo Wii, it will have to prove their viability in the competitive market is seven years, and Xbox 360 – six. According Divnich, consoles from Sony and Microsoft will succeed. And with the next generation platforms to repeat the PS2, having seen the new models in the middle of his career. Over the next few years will definitely change for the current flagship gaming segment of companies, but the PS3 and Xbox 360 will still attract attention.
materials on the topic:
– 10 most unsuccessful consoles ever;
– Games Industry for the week. 2.8 November 2009;
– Sony on PS3 has lost more than $650 million
