To this day, the PS2 holds the record for the most consoles sold in a single day as well as the record for most consoles sold in launch day in America.
V0 did not have a built-in DVD player and instead relied on an encrypted player that was copied to a memory card from an included CD-ROM (normally, the PS2 will only execute encrypted software from its memory card, but see PS2 Independence Exploit).
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.
Later hardware revisions had better compatibility with PlayStation games (Metal Gear Solid: VR Missons works on most silver models).
A silver edition is available in the United Kingdom exclusively.
PS2's opening day console sales eclipsed the previous record of 225,000 made by the Sega Dreamcast in 1999.
The device was poorly received, with some major features absent from the first revisions of the hardware, and has thus far experienced very weak sales in Japan, in spite of major price drops [5].
Although external USB 2.0 enclosures are affordable the lack of internal hard disk has implicated a problem for users with perhaps little knowledge of the software required to enable the external disk functionality.
Another major selling point over the Dreamcast was the PlayStation 2's ability to play DVDs, which gained it a presence in electronics stores which did not formerly sell video game consoles.
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.
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.
Many analysts predicted a close 3-way matchup between the PS2 and its soon-to-be-released competitors Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube, noting that the PS2's graphics were inferior but that it had the advantage of a head start, and had a wide assortment of games of every genre (Xbox's strength was in its hardware; GameCube was the cheapest of the 3 consoles).
Only a few million users had obtained consoles by the end of 2000 due to manufacturing delays.
Since the V12 version had already been established for this model, there were some disputes regarding these sub-versions.
The PlayStation 2 had a difficult start.
V3 has a substantially different internal structure from the subsequent revisions, featuring several interconnected printed circuit boards.
