[pwdisswordfishs]

> The PlayStation 2’s library is easily among the best of any console ever released, and even if you were to narrow down the list of games to the very best, you’d be left with dozens (more like hundreds) of incredible titles. But the PS2 hardware is getting a bit long in the tooth

Besides the library, the PS2 is the most successful video game console of all time in terms of number of units shipped, and it stayed on the market for over ten years, featured a DVD drive, and at one point was positioned by Sony not just as an entertainment appliance but as a personal computer, including their own official PS2 Linux distribution.

In a more perfect world, this would have:

(a) happened with a hypothetical hardware platform released after the PS2 but before the PS3, with specs lying in between the two: a smidge better than the former, but not quite as exotic as the latter (with its Cell CPU or the weird form factor; whereas the PS2's physical profile in comparison was perfect, whether in the original form or the Slim version), which could have:

(b) resulted in a sort of standardization in the industry like what happened to the IBM PC and its market of clones, with other vendors continuing to manufacture semi-compatible units even if/when Sony discontinued it themselves, periodically revving the platform (doubling the amount of memory here, providing a way to tap into higher clock speeds there) all while maintaining backwards compatibility such that you would be able to go out today and buy a brand new, $30 bargain-bin, commodity "PS2 clone" that can do basic computing tasks on it (in other words, not including the ability to run a modern Web browser or Electron apps), can play physical media, and supports all the original games and any other new games that explicitly target(ed) the same platform, or you could pay Steam Machine 2026 prices for the latest-gen "PS2" that retains native support for the original titles of the very first platform revision but unlocks also the ability to play those for every intermediate rev, too.

[anonymous908213]

> (a) happened with a hypothetical hardware platform released after the PS2 but before the PS3, with specs lying in between the two

I would argue strongly that the weak hardware is why the PS2, and other old consoles, were so good, and that by improving the hardware you cannot replicate what they accomplished (which is why, indeed, newer consoles have never managed to be as iconic as older consoles). You can make an equally strong case that the Super Famicom is the best console of all time, with dozens of 10/10 games that stand the test of time. I think the limitations of the hardware played a pivotal role in both, as they demanded good stylistic decisions to create aesthetically appealing games with limited resources, and demanded a significant level of work into curating and optimizing the game design, because every aspect of the game consumed limited resources and therefore bad ideas had to be culled, leaving a well-polished remainder of the best ideas in a sort of Darwinian sense.

> (b) resulted in a sort of standardization in the industry like what happened to the IBM PC and its market of clones, with other vendors continuing to manufacture semi-compatible units

Unlike the PC market, the comprehensive list of "other vendors" is two entries long. Is it a more perfect world if Nintendo manufactures knockoff Playstations instead of its variety of unique consoles? I don't think so.

[vlunkr]

I love retro consoles as much as the next middle aged software developer, but realistically, the reason those consoles are so iconic is because we were children. Every console generation is that special generation for one group of kids.

I do agree that sometimes limitations breed creativity, but that’s not the only thing that can make the magic work.

[JoeyJoJoJr]

This might be a nitpick, but I could probably only count 5-10 SNES games that would be considered 10/10 IMO, and not many that I think are worth sinking decent time into these days, compared to something like Burnout Revenge - a great game but certainly not a 10/10 game.

Still, I do find the SNES library, and 16bit games in general, quite astounding from a creative and artistic perspective, but not so much from a player’s perspective.

[Someone]

> Unlike the PC market, the comprehensive list of "other vendors" is two entries long

Before there was “a sort of standardization in the industry” the comprehensive list of “PC vendors” was one entry long.

Years before that, there were several times there was “a sort of standardization in the industry”, both of which led to there being many vendors.

- the Altair bus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-100_bus#IEEE-696_Standard: “In May 1978, George Morrow and Howard Fullmer published a "Proposed Standard for the S-100 Bus" noting that 150 vendors were already supplying products for the S-100 Bus”

- CP/M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M#Derivatives: “CP/M eventually became the de facto standard and the dominant operating system for microcomputers, in combination with the S-100 bus computers. This computer platform was widely used in business through the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s.”

[trashb]

This reminded me of the following quote "Limitation breeds creativity", and therefore the PS2's limitations where instrumental to it's success.

The PS2 in may ways was a great improvement on the PS1 however it was not easy to develop for and could do certain things very well, other things not so well. One example is the graphics due to the unusual architecture of the Emotion Engine (gpu). I think this forced the developers to consider what their games really required and where they wanted to spend the development effort, one of the key ingredients for good game design.

Additionally the release hype of the PS2 was quite big and the graphics that where achievable where very good at the time, so developers wanted to go through the development pains to create a game for this console.

Not to forget besides the mountain of great titles for the PS2 there is also a mountain of flopped games that faded into obscurity.

[delaminator]

> and at one point was positioned by Sony not just as an entertainment appliance but as a personal computer with their own official PS2 Linux distribution.

to avoid EU import taxes

[pjmlp]

As owner of PS2 Linux distribution and related hardware, it was sort of ok.

Sony intended it to be the evolution of Playstation Yaroze, fostering indie development, instead people used it mostly to run emulators on the PS2, hence why the PS3 version lost access to accelerated hardware for graphics.

PS2 Linux had hardware acceleration, the only difference was that the OpenGL inspired API did not expose all the capabilities of a regular DevKit.

Community proved that the development effort wasn't worth it.

The XBox arcade and ID@XBox programs have also taken these lessons into account, which is why you only see everyone running emulators on rooted XBoxes, not the developer mode ones.

The market of IBM PC clones only happened because of an IBM mistake, that was never supposed to happen, and IBM tried with the PS2 / MCA to take their control back, but the Pandora box was already open, and Compaq was clever with the way they did reverse engineer the BIOS.

[Izkata]

> featured a DVD drive

Wasn't it also among the cheapest DVD players on the market back then?

[larrik]

Yes, it was like the same price (close enough) as a regular Sony DVD player, which was nuts.

There were cheaper off-brand DVD players, of course.

You did have to buy a remote separately, though, unless you wanted to use the game controller (which had a cord).

[BrtByte]

Ironically, what you're describing is kind of happening now, just in software

[joshu]

it was a dreadful, useless computer, even then

[nick238]

Unlike the PS3 which the US Air Force bought 1,760 and clustered into the 33rd most powerful** at the time.

(**Distributed computing is very cheat-y compared to a "real" supercomputer which has insane RDMA capabilities)

[pwdisswordfishs]

"it was a dreadful, useless computer, even then"

So you don't dispute the thesis that the hypothetical general-purpose machine described in the comment would have needed to have been been better than the PS2?