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 The success of Sony's über-console Playstation 2, while often the pet target for skepticism and critique from perennial Sonyphobic naysayers, was never really in any doubt. The unabashed, almost alarming willingness with which the gaming community welcomed Sony's latest device of voluptuary gratification was a telling precursor of the PS2's near-certain dominance of the console market. With today's announcement of 10 million PS2 units having been shipped worldwide as of March 23, 2001, the big S's plans for global domination are slowly but surely coming to a head. To give you an idea of how rare an acomplishment that is, the original Playstation, unanimously hailed as the most popular console in videogame history, took 3 whole years to get into the "10 million" club. With these numbers surpassing Sony's most optimistic of expectations, it has now released its projections for the fiscal year 2002, setting the target at 20 million units(!) worldwide. Normally, a statement like this would earn itself a nasal "ha ha" from us (à la Nelson from The Simpsons), but seeing as how the popularity of the Playstation 2 platform is reaching pandemic levels, we'd best keep our cynical snickers under wraps for now. Well, enough ranting from us. Let's take a ganders (yes, we actually do talk like that) at the official sales figures recently made public by Sony:
| Region |
PS2 Launch Date |
Total Units Shipped |
|---|
| Japan |
March 4, 2000 |
4.65 Million |
| North America |
October 26, 2000 |
2.76 Million |
| Europe |
November 24, 2000 |
2.63 Million |
Asked about Sony's response to this overwhelming demand for the PS2, Kazuo Hirai, president and COO of SCEA, had this to say:
"We are pleased to announce that five months after the introduction of PlayStation 2 in North America, the company is on target to meet the three million unit shipment projection for this market by March 31, the end of our fiscal year. Vigorous sales of PlayStation 2 hardware and software further demonstrate the mass market appeal of the PlayStation brand and illustrates the company's ongoing dominance in this highly competitive category".
Source: ps2web.com
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