Playstation 2

After the huge success of the Playstation Sony set about developing its successor the PS2. It was announced in 1999 and released in Japan in March 2000.

Sony were in direct competition with Sega again with the release of the Dreamcast, Nintendo with the Gamecube and new to the home console market were Microsoft with the Xbox. Due to the success of the Playstation I think a lot of people were expecting very good things from the second Sony console. The PS2 was more of a multimedia system with the ability to play DVDs and also was backwards compatible with Playstation titles. I think the backwards compatibility was a very wise move as the library of Playstation games was so huge.

The PS2 initially sold very well due to the Sony branding and, as with the Playstation, an impressive number of launch titles. It sold over 98 million units in Japan just one day after its launch. To this day the PS2 still sells well and has sold an impressive 150 million units worldwide. It also became the fastest console to reach 100 million units sold, doing so just over 5 years after its launch.

Although the PS2 had competition from the Xbox and the much cheaper Gamecube it was the exclusive titles and backwards compatibility that allowed Sony to stay ahead of the game. Securing titles such as Grand Theft Auto 3 and the Metal Gear series really helped Sony stay on top.

In September 2004 in conjunction with the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Sony released a slim version of the console which breathed new life into the sales of the console.

http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/february04/ps2timeline/index2.shtml

Playstation 3


The third console from Sony was first released in 2006 in Japan on November the 11th. It directly competes  with the Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the 7th generation of consoles. It features a blu ray player instead of the traditional dvd drive as blu ray discs can hold a larger amount of information and also features the online gaming aspect of the Playstation Network (PSN).

The console was originally released featuring backwards compatibility with the former 2 Sony consoles but this feature was done away with when the console was redesigned. I suppose this was due to the number of people who were still buying PS2 consoles so they thought it was unnecessary but personally I think this was a bit of a mistake and it was something which stopped me from buying a PS3 console. The console also came in a variety of sizes of hard drive the 20,40, 60 and 160 gb versions which was very different from the Xbox 360 which came with easily interchangeable external hard drive.

The redesigned Slim version of the console was later released in 2009 and is now the only version in production which makes things a lot less confusing than having so many versions. It also features an upgradeable hard drive.

The PS3 has done fairly well in terms of sales but I can't help but feel that it lacks some of what made the previous 2 consoles so groundbreaking and popular.
In 2010 Sony released the Playstation Move. A camera and controller attachment for the PS3 to compete with the motion based Wii and Xbox Kinect.

The Kinect camera addition for the 360 was released around the same time as the Move and features controller free play. Players no longer needed a controller to play motion related titles they could use their bodies as the controller.

The Playstation Move uses controllers similar to the Wii but has the addition of a camera to detect motion and depth of field.

Both these developments were an obvious response to the success of the Nintendo Wii console which has sold a huge number of units and has become one of the bestselling home consoles in the short number of years since its release in 2006. Seeing that motion control was key in the future of gaming Sony and Microsoft both decided to develop motion software in order to compete.