PlayStation 2 sales are a lot higher than Sony says

Sony publicly says PlayStation 2 has shipped 155 million units, but the actual numbers are quite higher.

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Sony's PlayStation 2 is the best-selling video games hardware of all time. The system defined the early 2000s era thanks to its ability to play games and DVDs--the latter of which sparked widespread consumer adoption. So we have to wonder...just how many PS2s did Sony ship?

Shortly before leaving Sony, ex-PlayStation boss Jim Ryan recently said the PlayStation 2 sold 160 million units in its lifespan. Sony, on the other hand, officially puts the PS2 at 155 million. So what gives? Who's right?

The truth is that the PS2 has indeed surpassed Sony's public figure, and this has actually been explained before. In ResetERA post from 2018, Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad explained the PS2 numbers situation, and just days ago, Ahmad updated the figures with a lengthy analysis.

After checking old historical PlayStation filings and working backwards, Ahmad has surmised that total PlayStation 2 shipment figures are between 158 and 161 million.

"While this is as close as a final figure we'll ever get from Sony, it's also hard to say how much this has been rounded and whether Jim Ryan recalled the correct figure. So ultimately we're left with a theoretical range of 158.6m - 161.8m from Sony's public data and 160m from Jim Ryan," Ahmad said.

Using this range, we were able to updated our own PlayStation vs Nintendo hardware shipment comparisons. Below we have a chart based on the upper ranges of the data.

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