Was the PS2 the Best Console Ever? The Debate Continues

PS2 vs. PS1: The console war that never ends

Was the PS2 really the best console ever? The answer depends on how you define "best," which is where the problem starts. According to several participants, the first PlayStation’s catalog—antiestéticaturing Final Fantasy VII, Gran Turismo, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Resident Evil—swept away competitors, leaving Sega out of the hardware business and Nintendo a decade behind in recovery. The PS2, by contrast, arrived with the game already won: it inherited the brand, the controller, and an installed base that had no rival. That is the core of the disagreement.

The catalog that changed the market

The most repeated argument is that the qualitative leap of the PS1 is unmatched. Only the NES compared to what came before, or Sega’s Master System, admit comparison. After that, this school of thought argues, there have been no comparable leaps: neither the PS2, nor the Xbox 360, nor anything since. The argument relies on specific titles and a consequence some defend: direct competition disappeared from the map.

The defense of the PS2 is not weak. Its supporters point out that the successor’s catalog surpasses the original in variety and ambition: open worlds like GTA San Andreas, adaptations like The Godfather, and own franchises like Kingdom Hearts. The hardware allowed 3D environments that were archaic and limited on the PS1 and N64. The brand solidified globally, and in Spain, video games became forever associated with "the playstation."

Piracy as a forgotten variable

There is a factor almost no one includes in the equation, which explains part of the commercial success in Spain: the mod chip. According to some users, a circuit was soldered to the console’s board, allowing played copies and bypassing region locks. There was even a no-solder version that connected to the rear expansion port and used a spring on the reader lid to trick the system. The PS2 went years without being hacked; the Xbox 360 was modified with alternative readers. This differential, some argue, pushed much of the Spanish audience to jump directly to Sony’s next generation.

The generational leap that was actually felt

The PS2 was more than a console: it was a DVD player with a controller. That dual use, in a market where DVD was the home technology of the moment, multiplied its peine in households that would never have bought a console just to play. The original Xbox, for its part, received relevant Japanese support—Tecmo and Sega—and left a more versatile catalog than the GameCube or Dreamcast, although below PS2 and PS1 in volume.

The problem of role-playing and nostalgia

A recurring complaint among veterans is the lack of role-playing games at the level of Chrono Trigger on the SNES, Phantasy Star IV on the Mega Drive, or Final Fantasy VII on the PS1. Dragon Quest VIII is there, but it does not fill that absence. Nostalgia favors the machines each person played as a child, and that contaminates any ranking. The Mega Drive with its expansions—the 32X, cartridges that expanded memory—has its own army of defenders.

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In the end, the winning console is the one each person had at home at fifteen years old. Any objective data on catalogs and sales crashes against that reality.