Sony confirms that the Playstation 2 is PS't its sell-by date

Chris Merriman
@ChrisTheDJ
04 September 2018

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PLAYSTATION FANS - light a candle for the loss of an old friend.

Sony has confirmed that the PlayStation 2 (PS2) has been officially retired after 18 years of service.

The final straw comes with the retirement of the official repair program for the groundbreaking console with Sony explaining that it simply can't get the parts for it anymore. It had closed telephone support lines for PS2 at the end of August.

Despite finishing production in late 2012, Sony has continued to accept repairs, despite both the PS3 and PS4 superseding it.

Of course, as with any device, third-party repairs will always be possible, but this is a significant milestone for the device, which is estimated to have sold 150m units since its launch in March 2000.

Sony has thanked customers for sticking with the PS2 for this long, but as both the PS3 and PS4 have hit estimated sales of 80m a piece, it seems time to move on.

Many users have taken to Twitter to give tributes to Sony, both for making the PS2 in the first place and indeed for keeping it alive for so ruddy long.

Although its specs seem modest by today's standards, with it's bespoke "Emotion Engine" CPU, it was groundbreaking at the time and was the starting point for a whole generation of gamers.

It also spawned a whole bunch of accessories that were predecessors of the devices we have come to expect from modern consoles, such as the Eye Toy, an early form of and by supporting BluRay discs, it is partially responsible for the format's triumph over DVD-HD in the last great format wars (doesn't that sound like a cool idea for a movie? We'll call Michael Bay now).

The selection of games from the PS2 available on streaming service PlayStation Now is growing all the time, so as the hardware fails, the games will hopefully live on. Plus PaRappa The Rapper has been remastered for PS4 anyway, so that's alright then*. μ

*pedants - we are aware that it was Parrapa The Rapper 2 was on PS2. We're just having a laugh. Stand down.