PlayStation 2 User Base Hits 74 Million Globally

According to figures reprinted on business website GI.biz, sales of the PlayStation 2 console have now exceeded 74 million hardware units sold worldwide. This breaks down to 32.2 million in North America, 25.9 million in European and PAL regions (UK sales alone recently breached the 7 million mark) and 17.9 million in Japan. By comparison, Xbox worldwide sales were last reported to be 15.5 million, and GameCube sales somewhere around 14.5 million, according to multiple sources. Conversely, the original PlayStation hardware has now sold 100.9 million units since its launch ten years ago, with 40.2 million North American sales, 39.8 million in Europe and 20.9 million in Japan. Put together, this makes a staggering 174.9 million in hardware sales for the PlayStation brand as a whole. As far as a single, backward-compatible games hardware name brand, this exceeds even Nintendo's Game Boy brand, which has sold around 150 million units since its inception fifteen years ago.