A silver edition is available in the United Kingdom exclusively.
For some consumers this is in fact a limitation, especially for the fans of titles such as Final Fantasy XI, which requires the use of this peripheral, and prevents the use of the official PS2 Linux kit.
However, the release of several blockbuster games during the 2001 holiday season pushed the PS2 far in front even as the Xbox and GameCube made their impressive debuts.
This led to further shortages, and the issue was compounded in Britain when a Russian oil tanker became stuck in the Suez Canal, blocking a ship from China carrying PS2s bound for the UK.
As of V4 everything was unified into one board, except the power supply.
It is widely believed that Sony has abandoned support for the hard drive.
The new V12 model was first released in black.
Developers also complained that it was difficult to develop for the system, with little in the way of reference material from Sony for its exotic architecture.
However the New Slim Silver Models have more issues with playing PlayStation games than the first PS2 revisions.
In preparation for the launch of a new, slimmer PlayStation 2 model (SCPH-70000), Sony had stopped making the older PS2 model (SCPH-5000x) sometime during the summer of 2004 to let the distribution channel empty out stock of the units.
This allowed the PS2 to tap the large install base established by the PlayStation.
