Available in November 2004, it is smaller and thinner than the old version and includes a built-in Ethernet port.
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.
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.
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.
Yet, the PS2 initially sold well solely on the basis of the strength of the PlayStation brand and its backwards compatibility, selling over 900,000 units in the first weekend in Japan.
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].
When the PlayStation 2 launched in Japan in March 2000, Sony sold 980,000 units over the opening weekend.
In September of that year, in time for the launch of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (the best-selling game during the 2004 Holiday season), Sony revealed a new, smaller PS2 (see Hardware 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.
PS2's opening day console sales eclipsed the previous record of 225,000 made by the Sega Dreamcast in 1999.
There are also some disputes on the numbering for this PS2 version, since there are actually two sub-versions of the SCPH-70000.
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.
