The PlayStation 2 (PS2) (Japanese: ?v???C'X'e?[?V????2) is Sony's second video game console, the successor to the PlayStation and the predecessor to the PlayStation 3. Its development was announced in March 1999, and it was first released in Japan on March 4, 2000, in North America on October 26, 2000 and in Europe on November 24, 2000.

The PS2 is part of the sixth generation era, and has become one of the fastest selling gaming consoles in history, with over 100 million units shipped by November 2005, beating the previous record holder, the PlayStation, by three years and nine months.

Games
Main article: List of PlayStation 2 games
The PlayStation brand's strength has led to strong third-party support for the system. Although the launch titles for the PS2 were unimpressive in 2000, the holiday season of 2001 saw the release of several best-selling and critically acclaimed games. Those PS2 titles helped the PS2 maintain and extend its lead in the video game console market, despite increased competition from the launches of the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube. In several cases, Sony made exclusivity deals with publishers in order to pre-empt its competitors. Critically acclaimed games on the machine include the Grand Theft Auto and the ever-popular Final Fantasy (Square Enix) series, the latest two Metal Gear Solid titles, Devil May Cry and Devil May Cry 3, the SSX series, latest three Ace Combat titles, the Square Enix/Disney collaboration Kingdom Hearts, and first-party Sony Computer Entertainment brands such as the Gran Turismo, SOCOM, Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter series, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War and the Everquest spin-offs Champions of Norrath and Champions: Return to Arms. The PS2 has also been the home to many music games such as the latest DDR games, and the newer rock game Guitar Hero.

By the end of March 2005, there were 5,277 PS2 titles released worldwide, accounting for cumulative sales of 824 million units. With backwards-compatibility to PlayStation games, the PS2 had a released software library of 13,020 titles after 5 years and 27 days, although the region-coding limits this quite severely, to 3,181 PS2 titles and 4,907 PS1 releases in Asia; 1,121 and 1,501 in Europe; and 975 and 1,335 in North America.

The PS2 hardware can read both compact discs and DVDs. It is backwards compatible with older PlayStation (PS1) games, allows for DVD Video playback, and will play PS2 games off cheap CD-ROMs or higher-capacity DVD-ROMs. The ability to play DVD movies allowed consumers to more easily justify the PS2's relatively high price tag (in October 2000, the MSRP was $300) as it removed the need to buy an external DVD player (indeed, it could be said that the success of the DVD format was partly due to the PS2's ability to play DVDs, as the format seemed to appeal more to consumers after the console's launch). The PS2 also supports PS1 memory cards (for PS1 game saves only) and controllers as well. The PS2's Dual Shock 2 controller is essentially an upgraded PS1 Dual Shock; analog face, shoulder and D-pad buttons replaced the digital buttons of the original.

When it was released, the PS2 had many advanced features that were not present in other contemporary video game consoles, including its DVD capabilities and USB and IEEE 1394 expansion ports. It was not until late 2001 that the Microsoft Xbox became the second console with USB (1.1, with an Xbox-specific socket shape) and DVD support. (This is assuming the Nuon, an advanced DVD player graphics coprocessor, is not considered a console.) Even then, the Xbox required separate remote accessory to unlock the DVD function and Sony could continue to pitch the PS2 as DVD capable out of the box.

Note that compatibility with USB devices is dependent on the software supporting said USB device. For example, the PS2 was not able to boot an ISO image from a USB flash drive - this problem was solved however with the publishing of the version 3.6 of Swap Magic software. On the other hand, Gran Turismo 4 can save screenshots to an USB device without any problems.

Software compatibility
Support for original PlayStation games was also an important selling point for the PS2, letting owners of an older system upgrade to the PlayStation 2 and keep their old software, and giving new users access to older games until a larger library was developed for the new system. As an added bonus, the PS2 had the ability to enhance PlayStation games by speeding up disc read time and/or adding texture smoothing to improve graphics. While the texture smoothing was universally effective (albeit with odd effects where transparent textures are used), faster disk reading could cause some games to fail to load or play correctly.

A handful of PlayStation titles (notably Metal Gear Solid: Special Missions) fail to run on the PS2 at all (Special Missions fails to recognise Metal Gear Solid at the disk swap screen, for example). This problem appears to have been rectified in the slimline versions of the PS2, where most of the previously unplayable PSone games can now be played. It is a common misconception that disk swapping in a game (for example, for multi-disk games or expansion packs) is not possible on the PS2. The anomalous failure of the above title at its disk swap screen may have given birth to this rumor. Software for all PlayStation consoles contains one of four region codes: for Japan and Asia: NTSC/J, North America: NTSC-U/C, Europe and Oceania: PAL, and China: NTSC/C.