I am testing something so this post will be english only, in later posts I will have a spanish version available together with the second part of this Playstation 2 saga post. Thanks for reading!
Almost 10 episodes later it's time to talk about one of the most interesting topics in video gaming, console sequels are not exactly a novelty for the year 2000 (Nintendo had already made several replacements for their original NES) but boy, the Playstation 2 was playing in a league of its own when it was released in November of that year, Sony had had a spectacular reception with their first model and they wanted the second version of Playstation to be a real bomb in every way, both in terms of technology and with developers giving a huge facility and support to release games on the console that I'm sure has never been seen even today, maybe that's why Playstation 2 is the console that has the largest number of games ever produced for a console in the industry, but I'm getting ahead of the facts, the truth is that so far Sony has the advantage with a hardware superior to all consoles on the market and is about to launch what was to be the mother of all consoles, so far the video game is accepted in the culture, but the second attempt by Sony would go much further, massifying the video game in a new way and thus beginning a technological leap that is lived to this day.
The Playstation 2 is one of the most innovative consoles of all times not only because of the hardware it had and its policies with developers, but also because it opened the way to the new millennium with some problems in between, you see, from its presentation in 1999 until its launch in November 2000 there was a great stretch where Sony generated a huge expectation among gamers, the console was presented in each new conference in which Sony entered and in each of these presented a new feature for its new console. This Sony strategy was motivated by the growing concern of the company because Microsoft was designing plans to enter the video game market with its Xbox, also Sega's Dreamcast was having a very good few weeks selling just over half a million consoles a few months before the launch of Sony, and Nintendo was also lurking with its Gamecube so Sony did not want to limit expenses when promoting their console, they were going to give everything to keep their share of the market and expand it even more.
This is what the amazing prototype of the PlayStation 2 game boxes looked like
Although Sony did not count on several of the problems that the console was going to have, the high anticipation that it had from the players made them experience what is perhaps the first shortage of consoles where few people by the end of the year were going to have a console in their hands, the sales at Sony were overflowing and the success of the console was assured from the first day of launch, not only because it sold 900. 000 in a single day in Japan but Playstation 2 had taken advantage of a market completely unrelated to video games to promote itself, the DVD player market was a large one and most players at that time were much more expensive than a Playstation 2, so Sony very cleverly installed a small adapter for its console and by its launch the company had taken a step forward to make home theaters more accessible while selling a gaming system, attracting audiences both outside and inside the industry.
Not only that, Sony had also anticipated that they were working on the first backwards compatibility technologies and now buying the PS2 not only allowed you to play the new games that would come out but you could also play the original Playstation games at no extra cost, it is around this time that Sony also began to experiment with peripherals for their console, having a little less success with these but gaining experience for what would be a main function in their successors, the games of this second version would also have a characteristic feature product of the massification of the CD and DVD, new developers were beginning to set course towards the consoles and Sony had the best deal to release games on a console that was recognized and at the same time cheap with the issue of commissions to Sony, this brought many new video games that would mark its passage and allow Playstation 2 to take the lead, not only that but also Sony in an attempt to make video games with a different style, used as a reference the success of these games and then hire the developer studios to carry out their own productions, more artistic and focused on taking full advantage of the technology available.
Talking about Playstation 2 is going to be long, so I have decided to split this post in two parts, here we already talked a little bit about the background and challenges that Sony had when making this console but in the next post we will talk about the short and long term repercussions of the Playstation 2.
Thank you so much for reading this.