The PlayStation 2 (officially branded as PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on March 4, 2000, in North America on October 26, 2000, and in Europe and Australia on November 24, 2000, and is the successor to the original PlayStation, as well as the second installment in the PlayStation console line-up. A sixth-generation console, it competed with Sega’s Dreamcast, Nintendo’s GameCube, and Microsoft’s original Xbox.

Announced in 1999, the PS2 offered backward-compatibility for its predecessor’s DualShock controller, as well as its games. The PS2 is the best-selling video game console of all time, having sold over 155 million units worldwide, as confirmed by Sony. Over 3,800 game titles have been released for the PS2, with over 1.5 billion copies sold. Sony later manufactured several smaller, lighter revisions of the console known as Slimline models in 2004.

Release Date – PS2

JP: March 4, 2000[1]
NA: October 26, 2000[57][62]
EU: November 24, 2000[58]
AU: November 30, 2000

PS2 Slim
EU: October 29, 2004
JP: November 3, 2004
NA: November 2004
AU: November 2004

Best Selling Game – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas; 17.33 million shipped (as of March 26, 2008)

Media – DVD-ROM/CD-ROM

Included accessories and extras – DualShock 2 Controller, Composite AV cable

Accessories Retail –

• DualShock 2
• PlayStation 2 HDD
• Internal hard drive supported by PlayStation 2 Expansion Bay (model 30000 and 50000 only)
• PlayStation 2 Headset
• EyeToy
• Driving Force Steering Wheels with Force Feedback
• Onimusha 3 katana controller
• Resident Evil 4 chainsaw controller
• PlayStation 2 DVD remote control
• Network adapter
• Built-in for slim case model (PSTwo, model 70000)
• Memory Card (8 MB, 16 MB, 32 MB, 64 MB, 128 MB) (for PlayStation 2)
• Guitar Hero SG Controller
• ‘Buzz’ Controllers (with all versions of Buzz)
• Light gun (GunCon 2)
• Multitap (multi-controller adaptor)
• Component AV cable
• S-Video cable
• Euro-AV Cable (RGB-SCART)
• Microphones (with Karaoke Revolution and SingStar games)
• USB Mouse & Keyboard

CPU – 300 MHz MIPS “Emotion Engine”

GPU –

147 MHz “Graphics Synthesizer”; fill rate 2.352 gigapixel/sec; 1.1 gigapixel w. 1 texture(diffuse); 588 megapixel/sec w. 2 textures (2 diffuse maps or 1 diffuse map and 1 other(0 around 74 mill, 1 around 40 mill, 2 around 20 mill); 2 textures per pass
Capable of multi-pass rendering;

Connected to VU1 on CPU (a vector only for visual style coding things with 3.2 GFLOPS) to deliver enhanced shader graphics and other enhanced graphics