Sony has announced that they have officially shipped over 150 million PlayStation 2 consoles worldwide. The system launched to massive hype in Japan on March 4, 2000. The 150 million milestone was reached just under eleven years later, on January 31, 2011.
Along with the massive hardware shipments, a game library of 10,828 games have combined to sell over 1,527,000,000 software copies. Yep, that’s over 1.5 billion software units sold as of December 2010, which Sony credits largely in part to exclusives such as Gran Turismo, God of War, Ratchet and Clank, and SingStar, as well as to third party support.
Despite nearing its eleventh birthday, the PlayStation 2 is expected to see continued success, particularly in East Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and South America. By comparison, the PlayStation 3 has shipped roughly a third of the PS2′s hardware totals in just over four years.
