PlayStations are getting new livery.

More than 50 million PlayStation 2 consoles have been sold worldwide, computer entertainment giant Sony has said.

The figures are the cumulative total of shipments of the console since its launch in Japan in March 2000.

The sales figures reveal that most consoles have been sold in North America.

Sony also says increasing numbers of developers are signing up to make games for the console.

Leap in sales

Even though the PlayStation 2 has been on sale for almost three years, Sony says that it is selling faster than ever before.

PS2 sales

North America: 21.48m Europe: 16.02m Japan: 12.53m Total worldwide: 50.03m

It racked up sales of 40 million PlayStations up to September 2002, but took only four months to sell another 10 million.

The leap in sales is due to the price war that was being waged towards the end of 2002 started when all console makers, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, slashed the price of their devices to build demand.

To date North Americans have bought 21.48 million PlayStations, Europeans 16.02 million and the Japanese 12.53 million.

Sony also says the console is proving as popular as ever with games developers.

In the last 12 months, Sony sent more than 1,400 PlayStation 2 software development kits to games makers, a significant increase on the 9,000 it had sent out before 2002 began.

Sony says that there are now more than 1,500 game titles available for the PlayStation 2 console.