Why the Sony Playstation 2 won the Game Console Race
Why the Sony Playstation 2 won the Game Console Race
Sonys first attempt to enter the world of gaming came with the release of the first Playstation back in 1995. Its success is undeniable for a number of reasons; it trounced it closest rival the Sega Saturn by use of the higher-capacity CDs rather than the cartridges. Its success also led to the launch of the Playstation 2 in the year 2000. This time, the Playstation had a new rival the Dreamcast. Again, the Playstation 2 was unmatchable and it spanned a new era of gaming with such titles as Tekken and Gran Turismo among others. Despite starting off with a lack of serious killer titles in its launch collection, it had backward compatibility with the PSone. In addition to playing formerly successful PSone titles, it also came with a DVD playback.
Microsofts Xbox and Gamecube on the other hand had better hardware and the Xbox came with a new approach to gaming; Xbox Live, where players could play online. The Playstation 2 approach to online gaming was not as successful as Xbox Live despite it being free, however, it was a start to online gameplay. The Playstation 2 would later be scaled down to a third of its original size to a slim-line release that came out with the release of GTA: San Andreas. It came with a network port and its backward compatibility was slightly improved as well. The expansion bay was removed as well saving production costs. While the initial Playstation 2 looked like a serious piece of hardware, it had obsolete graphic power. The newer version was not only thinner but also came with slightly better graphical content support. In addition, it was more living-room friendly and its mechanical top-loading disk tray similar to the PSone meant that it was less likely to break.
Since the Playstation 2 was obviously less superior technically to its rivals, the Xbox and Gamecube, how did it win out? Simply put; the games. The fact that the Playstation 2 had a head start meant that by the time the other two came out, there was a formidable games library for the PS2. A stronger games library in turn meant more popularity despite it being inferior in every other way to the Xbox except in size. It just goes to show that while hardware is definitely one of the important elements in a game console, a list of RPG games, like the ones accompanying the Playstation 2 brand definitely tips the wagon the other way.
