With a price of $299.99 per console, Sony made gross sales of roughly $153,000,000.
There are also some disputes on the numbering for this PS2 version, since there are actually two sub-versions of the SCPH-70000.
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.
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].
As of V4 everything was unified into one board, except the power supply.
It is backwards compatible with older PlayStation (PS1) games, allows for DVD Video playback, and will play PS2 games off of cheap CD-ROMs or higher-capacity DVD-ROMs.
There is also now a V14 model (SCPH-75001) which contains an integrated EE and GS (disputed - see talk page) , and different ASICs compared to previous revisions, some chips having a copyright date of 2005 compared to 2000,2001 for earlier models.
Available in November 2004, it is smaller and thinner than the old version and includes a built-in Ethernet port.
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).
One of them includes the old EE and GS chips, and the other contains the newer unified EE+GS chip, otherwise being identical.
The PS2 launch seemed unimpressive and gaffe-prone, compared to the well-planned launch of the Sega Dreamcast, which was making a genuine attempt to woo developers and which had better launch titles.
These included a PCMCIA slot instead of the Expansion Bay (DEV9) port of newer models.
V3 has a substantially different internal structure from the subsequent revisions, featuring several interconnected printed circuit boards.
With a price of $299.99 per console, Sony made gross sales of roughly $153,000,000.
