Sony's PlayStation 2 gaming console will no longer be shipped to retailers in Japan.

The gaming juggernaut that went on sale in Japan in March of 2000 brought a great amount of success to Sony selling over 150 million units worldwide.

After its initial release, the console quickly became the most popular one in the world crushing Sega's Dreamcast which had generated a buzz after launching in 1999.

During the 2000 Christmas season the console was extremely hard to come by due to manufacturing issues and an extremely high demand for it.

The system's supremacy also did not waver once Nintendo released its GameCube console and Microsoft launched its Xbox shortly after. The PS2 also has one of the largest game libraries in the world.

It received a makeover in 2004 as Sony released slimmer version that was more compact.

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The system also became quickest to reach 100 million units shipped as it accomplished this feat in just 5 years.

Sony also introduced backwards compatibility on the PlayStation 2 as it had the ability to play games made for the original PlayStation console. It also could play DVDs which made the video format extremely popular.

Sony followed up the PlayStation 2 by releasing the PlayStation 3 in 2006. It stuck to many of the same concepts by making it backwards compatible, and giving it the ability to play Blu-ray discs that basically function as a high definition DVD with massive amounts of storage.

Sony's next generation gaming console is expected to be unveiled sometime in the near future.

Its name has not been confirmed, but it is safe to assume that the company will stick to what works and name it the PlayStation 4.