Sony promised gamers more bang for their buck. The Japanese government took that rather more literally: the PlayStation 2 needed export approval before it could leave the country, partly because its Emotion Engine processor was around six times as fast as a top-end PC. By Christmas the story had escalated nicely, with reports that Saddam Hussein had bought 4,000 of them to wire together into a missile guidance system. Nobody ever found a Scud that would run Gran Turismo, but it did wonders for the console's reputation.
Sony had unveiled the machine at E3 1999 with performance claims so extravagant the industry simply refused to believe them. What arrived in March 2000 didn't entirely live up to the marketing, but it did something far cleverer: it played DVDs. In 2000 a standalone DVD player cost more than a PS2 did, so Sony had effectively built a games console that a great many people bought as a film player and then, having bought it, started buying games for. It was backwards compatible with the original PlayStation too, so the largest software library in gaming came along at no extra charge.
Britain got it on 24 November 2000 at £299, and the launch was a shambles. Sony allocated just 80,000 pre-orders to the whole of Europe, despite Europe being their strongest PlayStation territory — 28 million PS1s sold here against 27 million in North America. Shops had nothing, and machines appeared on eBay at several times list price. The BBC's Watchdog ran the £299 price tag as a Rip-off Britain segment. And to round things off nicely, a fair number of the consoles that did make it under Christmas trees turned out not to work.
None of it mattered in the slightest. Once supply caught up the PS2 ate the entire generation, and the library it accumulated is arguably the finest any console has ever had: Grand Theft Auto III, Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, Okami, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. It had already frightened Sega out of the hardware business before a single unit shipped, and it comfortably outsold the GameCube and the Xbox combined.
Production finally ended in January 2013, twelve years after that chaotic British launch, with more than 155 million sold. Nothing before or since has come close, and given how the industry has changed, nothing ever will.