Jim Ryan says the PS2 sold 160 million units, though it might not be as simple as that

Years after Sony stopped making them, the now former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan might have finally revealed the total number of PS2s sold.

At this point in time, the PS2 is the best selling console ever made. The last official number provided by Sony was 155 million units, which was over a decade ago, back in 2012. Now, though, Ryan has claimed that the final number of PS2s sold was actually 160 million units, a good five million more than last reported. Speaking on the official PlayStation podcast in an interview sending off the man whose last major act at the company was laying off 900 people, when asked about what he associated with the 2000s, Ryan responded, "I would say 160 million, which is the number of PS2s that we sold."

This is obviously as close to an official word we'll get on the matter, seeing as Sony itself likely won't share the final number, though that doesn't mean it's 100% accurate. Industry analyst Daniel Ahmad brokedown the sales of the PS2 in a recent tweet, looking at various sales reports of both the PS2 and the PS3, using various sales reports of the two to figure out just how many consoles might have been sold. I won't go into all of the boring maths stuff, you can read that in the full tweet yourself, but based on reported combined hardware sales, the PS2 likely sold somewhere between 158.6 to 161.8 million units.

Again, obviously this isn't a hard number either, as it's a bit of a big range, though it roughly falls in line with what Ryan has shared. The main point is, even if the console stays at just 155 million, it's still the best selling console ever, and likely will be for a long time. Right now the Nintendo Switch is the third best selling console at 139 million units, so it would need to sell another 16 million to take the top spot. If Nintendo counts the highly rumoured but still unconfirmed Switch 2 as part of the same library, similarly to how the regular DS and 3DS were counted together (earning it the second spot of best selling consoles), then it will likely dethrone the PS2. But, we'll just have to wait until Nintendo says anything there.