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PlayStation (Games) Entertainment Games

PlayStation 2 Timeline, From Launch to Present 83

Decaffeinated Jedi writes "GameSpy has posted a timeline charting the history Sony's PlayStation 2, the third part in a series previously covered on Slashdot that includes similar retrospectives for the Xbox and for GameCube. The timeline traces the PlayStation 2's history from its initial boom, through its period as 'a repository for bad sports games, giant robot games, and other disappointing releases,' and up to the console's revitalization by such games as Gran Turismo 3, Metal Gear Solid 2, Devil May Cry, and Grand Theft Auto III." How has the PlayStation 2 measured up to your expectations?
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PlayStation 2 Timeline, From Launch to Present

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  • by DaZedAdAm ( 131819 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @03:18AM (#8324444)
    So where exactly was this timeline? It looked to me much more like a 5 page list of dated events. They seemed to have missed out on a very important part of the timeline....the LINE.
  • Incorrect number? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Slashdot Insider ( 623670 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @03:24AM (#8324469)
    Sony's weekly 100,000-unit shipments only further agitated the market. Though PlayStation 2 units were readily available in Japan, the console remained virtually sold out in the United States through March, 2001.
    IIRC that number was eventually cut down to 50K/week before getting cut down even further to 25K/week. The massive 0.25um 300mm^2 chip in the blasted thing probably didn't help Sony meet shipment targets.
  • Not that great. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 19, 2004 @03:31AM (#8324495)
    How has the PlayStation 2 measured up to your expectations?

    Poorly.

    The hardware is better than the Playstation 1, sure, but because it was so difficult to make games for, the first generation of titles barely looked any better than Playstation 1 titles. They had higher resolution, slightly better textures - but that's about it.

    And even the games that make the best use of the hardware today still aren't very good from a technical standpoint. The Playstation 2 can't even do anti-aliasing and trilinear filtering. Something that a bottom-of-the-range 3Dfx graphics accelerator could easily do in 1998. I mean, look closely at Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast. Nothing on the Playstation 2 has ever come close to looking that clear, crisp and vibrant - including the native PS2 Soul Calibur 2 release.

    And the best Playstation 2 titles just look kind of average in comparison to the best on Xbox and Gamecube. Splinter Cell and Crimson Skies on Xbox both look amazing. The best PS2 titles look.. well.. merely okay underneath all the rendering artifacts and lack of high-quality models and textures.

    The PS2 has the best controller, best memory cards, best sleek case design. But it also has the worst technology - worst video hardware, worst processor, worst CD-drive (that is really noisy!) and worst load times.

    A textbook triumph of marketing over technology.
    • Re:Not that great. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TechnoPops ( 590791 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @04:15AM (#8324619) Journal
      A textbook triumph of marketing over technology.

      The thing you seem to forget is that Sony was first. Yes, compared to Xbox and the cube, the PS2 hardware seems kind of lame, but the PS2 was also the first out the gate... with over a year of lead time. Sony set the bar, and MS and the Big N naturally aimed over it.
      • Re:Not that great. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 19, 2004 @04:43AM (#8324677)
        The thing you seem to forget is that Sony was first.

        Um... you're forgetting about Sega's Dreamcast? It was the first console with "real" 3D hardware (after the Nintendo 64) and even had a built-in modem.

        It had specs similar to the Gamecube - even though it reached the market way before the PS2 did, Sony's marketing destroyed it. This was part of the problem though - the Dreamcast was perceived by the public as a late-comer to the previous generation - not as a machine way ahead of it's time. I almost think that if they'd delayed and released it later (just before the PS2) Sega probably would have had some form of long-term success with the Dreamcast.
        • Re:Not that great. (Score:5, Informative)

          by k_187 ( 61692 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @07:00AM (#8325057) Journal
          Good point, but saying that the dreamcast and gamecube's specs were similar is just silly. The Dreamcast has a 200 mHz SH4 + PowerVR II graphics. The Gamecube has a 485 mHz PowerPC derivative (I believe its real similar to the 750 G3s that used to be in ibooks) + a custom designed Art-X (now Ati) chip. There's other differences in there, how sound is done, system ram make up etc. The gamecube is much more powerful than the dreamcast was. Although the Dreamcast did compete very well on graphics compared to the PS2. Its just that like you said, Sony's hype machine killed the non-hardcore gamer enthusiasm for the dreamcast, which happened to have the best launch ever at the time.
      • What sold me on the PS2 was the backwards compatability and the near garantee of a decent software catalog. Means I finally get to play FFVII, Syndicate Wars and Bushido Blade again after my PS1 went to the big second-hand hardware store in the sky. Sure, compared to the other consoles some of the games look like arse, but then compared to a PC this will always be the case too.

        Besides, I tend to play the PS2 when I get home after a night out anyway, so someone could probably replace it with a SNES and I do
    • "The Playstation 2 can't even do anti-aliasing and trilinear filtering. Something that a bottom-of-the-range 3Dfx graphics accelerator could easily do in 1998."

      In 4mb of Rambus? I don't think so.

      • You don't think so, eh?

        The N64 certainly didn't have a problem doing anti-aliasing on 4MB of ram. While I have to agree it was kinda stupid to put so little memory in for video, you can always just stream textures.

        As for trilinear, I don't think it has much of a memory cost. You're doing blending of interleaving MIPMAP levels in real-time, so it mostly cuts into your pixel thoroughput.
        • "The N64 certainly didn't have a problem doing anti-aliasing on 4MB of ram. While I have to agree it was kinda stupid to put so little memory in for video, you can always just stream textures."

          Hmm. What's the main implication for streaming the textures from a cartridge rather than a CD/DVD? Throughput, etc?

          "You're doing blending of interleaving MIPMAP levels in real-time, so it mostly cuts into your pixel thoroughput."

          Which in turn impacts the framerate and upper polygon count of the scenes you're s
          • Hmm. What's the main implication for streaming the textures from a cartridge rather than a CD/DVD? Throughput, etc?

            Developers already learned to do this properly on the original Playstation. Did you not notice how much better quality textures games began to use toward the latter days of the PSX? Do keep in mind that this was a 2x CD-ROM drive (300K/s)...the 4x DVD-ROM drive on the PS2 has a minimum of 10x more thoroughput. How the hell do you think the Gamecube gets by with only 3MB framebuffer?

            An
    • Troll.

      It has the worst hardware because it came out first, and what matters in a console isn't the hardware, it's the software. Somebody mod this down. 'Insightful' my ass.
      • Re:Not that great. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by kisrael ( 134664 ) * on Thursday February 19, 2004 @08:26AM (#8325356) Homepage
        and what matters in a console isn't the hardware, it's the software.
        For my money, the software isn't that hot either.

        I have all 3 systems, started with the GC. Now that Xbox has GTA3 and GTA:VC for it, I have fewer reasons than ever to want to keep the PS2. There are some genres were the PS2 is the best, but it's notably so-so at some stuff I like, for instance splitscreen multiplayer. (Stupid multitap) I know some people really think it has a super terrific library, but I think in the end, all 3 systems end up having about the same # of "really great" games, and the "really great" gams on PS2 don't interest me as a gamer as much as the other 2 systems.
        • I've got all three systems too (though I got them in the order of release).

          I've ended up giving the PS2 to my gf, there's just nothing left to play on it (though I am in Europe where I'm not going to get hold of Disagea).

          It was good while it lasted, but it didn't last as long as it should. The only thing going for it now is the fact that you can get the software very cheap.
  • by Mad_Fred ( 530564 ) <[fredrik] [at] [bjoreman.com]> on Thursday February 19, 2004 @03:39AM (#8324520) Homepage
    For some reason, I've never felt any draw to the PS2 itself as a console. The Gamecube is cool (and these days ridiculously cheap too) and the Xbox ... well, the fact that I bought one says it all I think ... Guess the specs appealed to the geek in me and the games I wanted were available.

    But the PS2, nope. Never any attraction. And that's despite the fact that I've played several great games on a friend's unit over the years. It's just never felt purchase-worthy. And I don't think it will even if it drops to 'Cube prices, but I'm always toying with the idea of picking up a 'Cube just to play Zelda and Metroid.

    Perhaps it's simply that the PS2 has a lot of good and great games, just nothing that's a total drool-causer for me. Especially not drool-causers that don't show up on the other consoles if you're just a little patient ...
    • If you were going to buy a console for the primary purpose of mucking about with it, programmatically, which one would you get?

      Does the Linux/PS2 port have a more 'fun' realm than the Linux/XBOX realm?

      I've considered getting a couple of gaming platforms, mostly for the hack value - I'd love to make an XBOX or PS2 a workable terminal in my house for various net-related things.

      Which system give best bang for the hacker buck, in your opinion?
      • If you were going to buy a console for the primary purpose of mucking about with it, programmatically, which one would you get?

        I think Dreamcast might be your best bet. Cheap, reasonably powerful 3D, 4 controllers, homebrew community, and you can (not 100% reliabely?) burn CDs for it.
  • by Rallion ( 711805 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @03:41AM (#8324527) Journal
    I take offense to the terrible treatment that giant robot games recieve.

    In all seriousness, Zone of Enders II: The Second Runner is my favorite PS2 game. And that's all about the robots.

    Also, I found it interesting that they could talk about games that looked cool but aren't really as fun as they look, and yet mention Devil May Cry as one of the console's great titles.

    But come on. More love for the giant robots, please.
  • by bishiraver ( 707931 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @03:46AM (#8324544) Homepage
    Both systems were more powerful than PlayStation 2.
    This statement amuses me. The Xbox is built on an 800mhz celeron processor. The Gamecube utilizes a powerpc based processor. The only reason graphics on the playstation 2 look sub-par, is because it only has 4mb of video memory. The actual cpu, video processing units, and sound processing units are much more powerful than either the Gamecube or xbox. One vector unit of the PS2's emotion engine, for example, can perform Just over a GFLOP [uiuc.edu]. This is immensely better than the X-box (my dual pentium3 800mhz machine cannot even perform a GFLOP), though I'm not sure about the gamecube - I assume it probably doesn't do as well, either. Of course, this performance is only utilizing one of the vector units - there are two. 2GFLOPS (even though they proportedly are capable of 6.2) is nothing to be ashamed of.

    As was said before, the actual logic units of the playstation2 are well beyond both the xbox and the gamecube - the simple fact is, that the video memory does not hold nearly as many pretty textures, and cannot do anti-aliasing very well (mainly because of the lack of memory). If they had utilized something like 64mb or 128mb of memory, the system would have smoked either one of the other systems. The major problem with the emotion engine in floating point calculations, is that it only performs at 32-bit precision, not 64-bit. Of course, neither do the numerous pentium3 (And 4) based beowulf clusters out there.
    • by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @04:20AM (#8324628) Homepage Journal
      "The actual cpu, video processing units, and sound processing units are much more powerful than either the Gamecube or xbox."

      No, they're not. You're comparing the main processors of the GC and XBOX to the PS2's graphic chip. The GC and XBOX both have seperate graphics chips, and the results wipe the floor with the PS2. The RAM bottleneck for that system is a good chunk of the reason why the graphics are blurry, no doubt about that. However, the GC and XBOX both have nifty little hardware graphic features (anti-aliasing, texture compression, etc) that the PS2 has to do in software.

      The XBOX and GC are both decidedly more powerful than the PS2, they also have technology that's a year newer.
      • by bishiraver ( 707931 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @09:07AM (#8325649) Homepage
        No, the emotion engine (made up of vector units and central processing unit) is seperate from the graphics synthesizer, which has a memory bandwidth of 48 gigabytes/sec [playstation2-linux.com]. The Geforce3 (similar to the graphics chip in the xbox) has approximately 7.36 GB/s [anandtech.com] of memory bandwidth.

        Unlike what was said in another post [slashdot.org], the PS2 -does- do trilinear filtering - Along with "Texture Mapping, Bump Mapping, Fogging, Alpha Blending, Bi-...Linear Filtering, MIPMAP, Anti-aliasing, and Multi-pass Rendering" [playstation2-linux.com].

        The problems, of course, are that the emotion engine and graphics synthesizer require a PhD in mathematics and computer science to be able to code for them, so their potential has barely been reached - even by Sony's own programmers.
      • by xero314 ( 722674 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @10:03AM (#8326318)

        This is where any programer or person with any technical knowledge begins to laugh. The Vector Units of the PS2 are not it's graphics engine. These units are general purpose vector units. Yes it is true that in typical game design one of the two VUs is dedicated for Graphics processing, this is not only not required nor is it always done.

        There is a reason that more than one major US university has a project to use a PS2, or PS2 cluster, for scientific computing, and none have atempted this with an xbox (not sure about the game cube, which also has decent vector procssing) . The power and flexibility of the VUs is the reason why PS2 games have better AI and Physics (when comparing the best of console games, all systems have their crappy games). The fact that the VUs are not dedicated to graphics processing is why PS2 graphics are not what they could be, because most developers, especialy american developers, have never programed on such a system. But as I have said before Lazyness is no reason knock a system.

        The real ignorance is shown with statements about the PS2s RAM bottle neck. If you ever looked at the arcitecture of the PS2 you will see it was built for high process Multimedia. It is capable of moving it's entire main memory store in a single cycle to any one of it's processing units. The key is keeping the pipeline full. Typical programing has been done by filling large memory stores, cache, and letting it tricle out to the processing units. Do your self a favor and research the technology before you try and talk about it.

        • "Do your self a favor and research the technology before you try and talk about it. "

          I did, the graphics on it suck.
          • Critical failure of logic, core dump.

            GURU MEDITATION #522640,8327468
            • That's not a failure of logic. It's a wad of insight rolled up into a package that Mr. "I'm smarter than you" isn't witty enough to realize. He was pointing out that the results don't match up to what he was describing.
              • Except he misses the point entirely, as do you, apparently. When X states "hardware is better" and you say "Graphics are worse" you've got a classic Apples vs. Oranges situation. Saying "WELL I REALLY LIKE ORANGES!" doesn't help prove "These apples are better than those apples" argument.

                skye
                • "When X states "hardware is better" and you say "Graphics are worse" you've got a classic Apples vs. Oranges situation. "

                  No, I don't think so. It's not as simple as that by a long shot. This isn't a Mac vs. PC style thing where one does some things better than the other. (And vice versa.) The conversation was about the graphic power of all three machines and how it relates to playing the same games. The Playstation 2 is underpowered in comparison to the GameCube and the XBOX. If it has advantages in
          • Good point. You can talk all the technical shit you want, but the fact remains that most PS2 games look like complete shit compared to GC and Xbox games, and even some Dreamcast games.
    • Of course, neither do the numerous pentium3 (And 4) based beowulf clusters out there.

      Interesting, I thought that ever since the i80x87 [ucr.edu] line of chips you had 80-bit floating point. It even has support for many rounding modes. This is superior precision to the IEEE 64-bit spec.

      Please also understand that the 6.2 GFlops you cite is a theoretical peak, while you state that your dual P3 does not even get 1 GFlop this was surely with some lame test you ran. The P3 using SSE can do much better than what you cl

      • Actually, no, I don't even own a playstation 2 (I sometimes use my kid brother's, though). I prefer gaming on the computer.

        However, I have special interest in the Playstation 2, seeing as I'm in the High Performance Computing department of my school - I've been doing specific research on playstation 2s, their floating point performance, and scalability of clusters. From what I've found, though, the playstation2-linux project hasn't really gotten a lot of utilities completely ported over to take advantage
    • You're forgetting that the GameCube and Xbox use ATI and NVidia chips for the graphics, respectively. Compare the Flipper chip or the GeForce derivative to the emotion engine if you want a fair comparison - the emotion engine looks pretty bad when you do that.

      Before you complain the PS2 only has 4 megs of video memory, keep in mind that the GameCube only has 3 megs of video memory. The GameCube has 24 megs of main RAM, 16 megs of auxillary RAM (not directly CPU addressable - you need to use DMA to transfer
      • The emotion engine isn't the graphics engine of the PS2 - though it can be used to augment the graphics engine of the PS2. It's a major overlook that a lot of people make, and is outlined better here [slashdot.org].
  • by M3wThr33 ( 310489 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @03:58AM (#8324567) Homepage
    For as many failed units that Sony throws out, it still amazes me when people associate the word Sony with Quality.
    • by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @04:23AM (#8324632) Homepage Journal
      "For as many failed units that Sony throws out, it still amazes me when people associate the word Sony with Quality. "

      I worked at a video game retailer when the original Playstation was launched. From that Sept to just after XMAS, for every 100 PS's we sold, we got roughly 20-25 back defective. This was in the whole district, not just the store I was in. I can't imagine this was limited to just Kansas City.

      Funny thing is, people actually deny that the original PS had this many problems. Even our competitors bitched about it.
      • I should have mentioned this in my previous post. Sometime after that Christmas, the defect rate went way down. It happened right about the time that the "boot with the door open" trick to play imports stopped working on newer units. I think Sony did something to improve the manufacturing.

        I'm sorry if my original post read like "All the PS's broke all the time.
      • Agreed (Score:4, Funny)

        by August_zero ( 654282 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @07:51AM (#8325211)
        The PS2, and the forthcoming PS3 are the only Sony products I would ever buy for this reason exactly. For every Sony product I have bought over the years, only one of them still worked normally after about year and a half of purchase. I had to replace my Ps1, and I have already had to replace my PS2. Now one could write this off to bad luck, but of my half dozen gamer geek friends, 4 of them have had to replace their PS2s since launch.

        I have owned every Nintendo system (except the virtual boy) and have never had a single problem. My NES, purchased in 1989 still works (albeit with a little bit of fighting with the cartridge loading mechanism) And while My X-box did need to be replaced a few weeks ago, I am the only person I know that suffered such ill-fortune with it.

        Why do I still by Playstations? Um well I have this gaming problem and I can't help it. He doesn't hit me all the time...
  • PS2 is the Vanilla of the consoles; nothing all that special really, definitely weaker hardware-wise than its two main competitors. With great titles like "Fantavision" (that was sarcasm for you people having trouble keeping up) at launch, rumors of DVD driver corruption in Japan, and PS2 scarcity for the first six months after launch (less then half of the promised units shipped) it had a shaky launch, but that doesn't seem to have slowed it down.

    I think that Sony has really hit their stride this time; th
  • One word: Square (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lovebug2000 ( 195893 )
    One major gripe I have about both GC and Xbox is the definitive lack of RPG's. Sure GC has it's tried and true Zelda, but that was a late comer game, and Xbox titles concentrate far more on Sports/Action/Fighing genres than RPG. The most definitive company representing this is Squaresoft, who only of late are coming back to Nintendo with FFCC. Not only that, but through Sony, I can play not only FFX, but virtually every final fantasy game every created, as well as numerous other great classics that on la
    • I play almost exclusively RPG and adventure games and if I were to buy just one console now, in 2004, I would go with the xbox. KotOR is just soooo amazingly good. Then you have Shenmue 2 and Syberia at bargain prices, plus some others (Beyond Good and Evil) that are available for both platforms. And maybe Fable really will be the "best rpg ever" if it's ever actually released. :)

      I do intend to get Xenosaga for PS2 when I get bored of KotOR but that won't be for quite some time. :)
  • When I got the PS2, I was looking forward to a lot more good games than what finally ended up happening. I had a lot of fun with FFX, MGS2, and Virtua Fighter 4 (bit of a surprise, that one) but those are the only games I really enjoyed. I thought Xenosaga would be awesome but it wasn't anywhere near as good as Xenogears. I was also looking forward to The Lost because it's developed by the same company that did System Shock 2, but it seems to have fallen off the face of the earth.

    I'm considering picking
  • Funny, I got the impression that there was a lot more interest in Final Fantasy [gamefaqs.com], and when it comes right down to it, more interest in games from "lesser systems" even [gamefaqs.com].

    Don't get me wrong, I know a few people who were enraptured by GTA, but I honestly think this article is overplaying its importance. I know several PS2 owners, and not many who actually own GTA3 or GTA:VC.

    • i own a ps2 and vice city what u mean by that people dont own gta or gta vice city i know many of my other firends that play that still its a fun game such as u can stealt hings u could not ever do and go into buildings its moreof a game u can explore and stuff i love it. i jsut cant wait till they come out with gta 5 or gta: sin city it is called.
    • Re:Grand Theft Auto? (Score:3, Informative)

      by dhamsaic ( 410174 )
      I think it's difficult to overstate the importance GTA3 had for the PS2. It came totally out of left field to take the world by storm. It reportedly sold over four million copies on pre-order alone and by the time Vice Ciy was announced in May 2002, GTA3 had sold over six million copies. That was about six months after the game launched, for an average of a million units a month.

      I'm at work and can't look up all the numbers, but now that it's on the Greatest Hits line and thus has enjoyed the $30 price cut
    • ummmm.

      You are using a site for harder core gamers (hard enough core to use the internet to find out about games), that own computers, have internet access.

      I know a lot of PS2 owners with no computer, and a lot of people that play games on PS2's and only use computers for researching and typing papers.

      I bet a general population vote would see strong representation from sports games that is not shown there.

      I bet less then 30% of console owners are even familier with the WindWaker.

      GTAIII was incredibly ip
  • I am very disappointed in all of the newest RPG's...they are all graphics and no story. This is very very sad. I am more likely to play any Final Fantasy on NES and SNES then the new ones...i do not care what new system it is...the last good one that was produced was FF7...that is the newest one i would play as eversince that it has been a complete focus on graphics...however an RPG needs what many new ones are missing...A STORY LINE
    • Not to be antagonistic or anything, but FFI had horrible cookie cutter story line. It's fun to play for it's merit as a groundbreaking RPG for its time, but to compare its story to the complexity of even some of the weaker storylines of modern RPGs just sounds sort of foolish. Even the recent FF Origins collection did little to improve the story structure of the first NES FF games.

      I think I understand what you are saying about modern RPG storylines, and I agree entirely. Too much is concentrated on feature
  • Mine did very poorly at meeting my expectations for surviving until the next generation. It started dying a slow death a few weeks back (freezing up after playing for a while), which is apparently not uncommon. I took it to a game shop that buys back consoles and will use what I got back to subsidize my purchase of...another PS2. *hangs head in shame* While I despise the lack of quality of Sony's products I still have to play those exclusive titles. My PS1 died an early death too, but wasn't expensiv
  • according to article there is some kind of Gran Turismo S-Spec...

    IT'S A-SPEC!!!!
  • Well I own an Xbox, DC (JAP), Saturn(JAP) and had a GC till recently. And what do I play most? PS2 by a mile. Yes the graphics aren't that hot next to the Xbox and GC, but neither are the saturns and there are some great games on that system.
    Fact is, it has the best controllers, gives the widest choice of games, has some great exclusive titles and by far the biggest back catalogue of games available anywhere (as they had the good sense to make it backward compatible - something all Nintendo consoles and the
  • Almost perfect (Score:3, Interesting)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @01:59PM (#8329569)
    The article was outstanding, except it labeled PS2 as the best system of all time.

    PS2 is the best system today but it hasn't destroyed its competitor the way NES did. Xbox and GC are still standing.

    IMHO NES 8-bit is forever the most dominant monopoly the video game industry will ever see.
  • ...once I got a good one.

    I was one of those that just *had* to have one at launch time. Big mistake. It was a flaky unit.

    The first machine lasted about a year or so. I did not replace it right away because I was busy at the time.

    The second one has been flawless for quite a while now.

    The graphics shortcomings really do not matter much to me because the display is easily good enough to enjoy the game. I know the hardware is capable, but it is a bear to program.

    In this way, the PS2 is a lot like the o

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