PlayStation 4 Outsells PlayStation 2 at the 3 Year Mark

Now this here is an interesting tidbit.

Without a doubt, the best selling console in gaming history has to be the PlayStation 2. It had a long run, hosted thousands of worthy games, worked online, used a built-in DVD player, and thus sold upwards of 155 million units around the world—the only non-portable gaming consoles even close to that number is the original Playstation (102.49 million sold) and the Wii (101.56 million sold). It’s the big winner in the gaming world, and the goodwill it fostered has lead Sony to ‘win’ every console race since… even now, two generations later.

But here’s the thing. According to a new Sony report, there might be a new competitor of the PlayStation 2 in the near future: its own grandchild, the PlayStation 4.

Now, the PlayStation 4 hasn’t sold anything close to that 155 million marker. But, Sony recently sold 3 million last quarter, which means it officially passed the 25 million sales mark at twenty months… a feat that took the PlayStation 2 three years to achieve. Furthermore, sales projection shows that they won’t be slowing down anytime soon—it seems like, at least for the immediate future, the sales are going to continue to skyrocket.

Skyrocket enough to beat the PlayStation 2, perhaps…?

…no, of course not. The PlayStation 2 had enormous third-party support now enjoyed by PCs, it was cheaper, it came at a time before mobile gaming, it was oftentimes people's first DVD player, it rode on the success of the original PlayStation, and its competitors were the Nintendo GameCube and the relatively new up-and-coming Xbox. The PlayStation 2 was the height of the console golden age. It’s not going to happen again as PCs and indie games render consoles obsolete, and I very much doubt the PlayStation 4 will even break 100 million, let alone 155 million.

But, still, the rate of sales is certainly impressive. Good for you, Sony, on making a lot of money really quickly.