Short answers, pulled from the story.
The PlayStation 2 sold 160 million units worldwide, making it the best-selling video game console of all time. This figure was confirmed by Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan in February 2024 and officially appeared on the PlayStation 30th Anniversary website in November that year.
The PlayStation 2 was first released in Japan on the 4th of March 2000. It launched in North America on the 26th of October 2000, in Europe on the 24th of November 2000, and in Australia on the 30th of November 2000.
The Emotion Engine was the PlayStation 2's custom central processor, co-designed by Sony and Toshiba. It ran at a clock rate of 294.912 MHz and delivered 6.2 gigaflops of floating point performance, which was twice the speed of the leading PC processors at the time of its manufacture.
Sony included DVD playback because Ken Kutaragi, after witnessing a demonstration of the Nuon enhancement chip, saw an opportunity to price the PlayStation 2 comparably to standalone DVD players while offering additional gaming functionality. At launch, the PS2's DVD capability was a major commercial driver, particularly in markets where standalone DVD players remained expensive.
Sony officially discontinued PlayStation 2 production on the 4th of January 2013, nearly thirteen years after its Japanese launch. The last game released for the system was Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 in the United Kingdom on the 8th of November 2013.
The best-selling PlayStation 2 game is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, released in 2004, which sold 17.33 million units. The console's total software library exceeded 4,000 titles with cumulative shipments of 1.54 billion copies.