The PS2 clearly isn’t going to let go of its astronomical sales record any time soon, as Sony has announced that a further five million of the things were somehow sold since it last reported numbers in 2012.
On the official PlayStation history page, it’s been newly confirmed that the PS2 sold over 160 million units worldwide since its release in 2000. It was already quite comfortably the best-selling console of all time with the previously reported figure, which placed it at “more than 155.0 million” sell-in sales (to retailers) in March 2012. So, uh, who were the five million people buying brand new versions of a console that’d been out for at least 12 years to boost that number further in the years since?
Initially, it does sound a bit weird. However, it wasn’t until the very end of 2012 that Sony announced it was ceasing production of the console (thanks, Famitsu), so there were still more of them being made for several months after those last official sales numbers were released. Of course, that’s not to mention any additional stock on the shelves that hadn’t been sold by the time of the previous headcount. Being able to shift an extra five million of the things brand new after 12 or more years is still very surprising, but not impossible – it is a fantastic console, after all.
The updated numbers do mean that the goalpost has now moved for every other console trying to compete with it, however. According to Nintendo’s figures, the Nintendo DS got incredibly close to matching the PS2’s old record, with 154.02 units sold, and the Switch has been inching closer and closer with each financial update. As of the end of September, the hybrid console had hit 146.04 million sales, but it’ll now need around 14 million additional sales to match and surpass Sony’s console, something that’ll likely get harder to do with its successor (better known as the Switch 2) on the horizon.
Despite being rather far behind its predecessor in terms of units sold, earlier this year, the PS5 became PlayStation’s most profitable console generation yet, so Sony keeps winning in that regard. Whether it’ll ever hit its goal of 100 million lifetime sales is another matter, though – at 65.5 million as of September, it’s still got a ways to go.