January 17^th, 2003 (12:00am) - Announced today by Sony, their Playstation 2 video game console has passed an impressive mark of 50 million units shipped worldwide. This is a direct result of a very successful holiday, as Sony reportedly moved around 10 million units in just 3 months from October to the end of the year. While units shipped does not actually mean sold, 50 million shipped just shows how much love the world is having for the PS2.

It’s also a testament to how big of a gap competitors Microsoft and Nintendo have to overcome. 50 million is a number people at Nintendo don’t expect to see until 2005. With their stocks dropping due to GCN’s sluggish holiday sales and the market style of the US, who knows what Nintendo will be able to do. As for Microsoft, XBox Live was just released in Japan, let’s hope that gives the system the boost it needs to become a true competitor overseas. They are hoping for 9 to 11 million XBox systems sold total before June 30th, the end of their fiscal year.