PS2 was dominant because it had great games, backward compatibility (for awhile) and was also a DVD player. The piracy angle didn't affect sales, despite what Sony says.
You underestimate the impact of piracy in developing countries. It’s true that almost no one bought games at full price, so Sony was only seeing unit sales.
However, once these countries developed further and the people who grew up with PS consoles started to make more money, guess which consoles and games these people decided to buy? Hint: it wasn’t Xbox!
Long story short, easy access to piracy was a gateway to future PS game sales in many developing countries.
That's me. As a kid 15+ years ago, buying a video game for PS2 was ridiculously expensive. I was buying cheaper copies from local "distributors", then I eventually got Internet connection and learned to download them myself. I did buy a PS4 a few years ago and purchased a few games - which does not sound like much, but I basically have 0 time for that now, but if I did have time, it would not be PC, Xbox, it would be PlayStation. If it was just for the exclusive titles. God of War was one of my favorite games and I was happy to play its recent continuation (though I only had the time to finish like 1/3 of the story, I really enjoyed it).
I also bought PS3 before Hotz by the way. Over the span of 2 years I bought like 3 games I cared about the most, that's all I could afford with the money I had available as a kid. After the jailbreak I had some 20 titles.
About 130 of 160 million PS2s were sold in North America, Europe and Japan. Developing countries don't appear to be a significant market for the console.
"developing countries" in that context are places like the former soviet union, i.e. half of Europe at the time, or latin america. The hardware was hella expensive, but with several months of savings it was possible. The games were a different matter. You were basically buying imports from the other end of the continent with all the shipping and customs taxes that incurs. Piracy was what drove people's buying decisions.
This is heavily skewed. If you lived in Eastern Europe it was customary to drive down to Germany to buy PS1/2 because they were much cheaper there. I know several people who started their retail business just by bringing back car loads of PS2's. One guy even got a mocking nickname (something like "playstation") that stuck with him for decades after when he moved on to selling HiFi and AV out of his store.
I absolutely assure you no one, ever, bought original games in those countries. Especially not the (relatively) rich who could afford them.
DVD playback wasn't a selling point. No one had DVDs back then. Everyone watched xvid on their PC. That was the only way to obtain digital movies. DVD stores were very minimal and saw no attention. Rentals were mostly VHS.
Yep, it was the same in the Middle East. Immigrants and travelers to Europe and the US frequently brought back electronics, including game consoles. They were then modchipped locally.
I can echo that sentiment. My original xbox was chipped. As a hacky kid with no money, it was the only way I could play new games. Guess who went on to own every xbox generation for the next 10+ years?
It was also out for so long that it gave it plenty of time to end up used for cheap. It seemed like everyone had one laying around or in the closet at home by the end of its run, usually a slim one honestly.
DVD playback was huge when it came out. DVD players were still expensive so if you wanted one, it barely cost any more to get a DVD player that was also a PlayStation. Between that and PS1 backwards-compat, the PS2 was a bargain.
That's true with the latest consoles too, honestly. They are even better deals in terms of what you get. My Xbox one is nearing 10 years old and it still plays new games, it plays a lot of the older games if they've been ported at least (bone of contention I know it not being proper backwards compatibility), performantly runs all streaming services (can't be said about modern smart TVs), its a blu ray player, I have 5.5 tb of local storage on it, and I got it used for about the price of a modern game.
The same week that Sony launched the PS2 they also launched a 100-disc carousel CD/DVD changer as part of their home theatre kit. There might also have been a 200-disc changer, but I know the shop I worked in stocked one of the 100-disc changers.
Just think! All your CDs and movies in one machine, that you can play on your big rear projection TV over your 5.1 surround speakers!
Just think! They had absolutely no intention of releasing a version that was actually a PS2 with wireless controllers, and indeed thought the very idea that anyone would buy such a thing was laughable.
Not true entirely. Yes all those features helped, but in developing markets, the ability to easily mod chip them to play pirated games was the real seller.
