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A silver edition is available in the United Kingdom exclusively.

After an apparent manufacturing issue caused some initial slowdown in producing the new unit, Sony reportedly underestimated demand, caused in part by shortages between the time the old units were cleared out and the new units were ready.

As a result, although Sony and Nintendo both started out late and although both followed a decentralized model of online gaming where the responsibility is up to the developer to provide the servers, Sony's efforts made PS2 online gaming a big success.

Currently, most people just use V12 for both models, or V12 for the old model and V13 for the newer one.

Later hardware revisions had better compatibility with PlayStation games (Metal Gear Solid: VR Missons works on most silver models).

Not only did Sony roll out the PS2 online adapter in late 2002 to compete with Microsoft, several online launch games were first party titles such as SOCOM US Navy SEALS in order to show that Sony was supporting this feature actively.

Sony also advertised heavily as well and it had the advantage of being supported by Electronic Arts.

The ability to play DVD movies allowed consumers to more easily justify the PS2's relatively high price tag (in October 2000, the MSRP was $300) as it removed the need to buy an external DVD player (indeed, it could be said that the success of the DVD format was partly due to the PS2's ability to play DVDs, as the format seemed to appeal more to consumers after the console's launch).

The machine's future continues to be uncertain, with North American and European launches considered to be distant if at all.

These included a PCMCIA slot instead of the Expansion Bay (DEV9) port of newer models.

V10 and V11 have minor changes.

With a price of $299.99 per console, Sony made gross sales of roughly $153,000,000.