Has my PS2 finally died?
 

Well after 7 years it looks like it has. Tried playing yesterday and every game i put in says "disc could not be read", i tried 10 different games with the same result. Tried again this morning, same thing. Should i bother trying a cleaning disc? Might be time to upgrade to next gen.

Has the lens ever been cleaned? If not then it's certainly worth trying, but you should actually clean the lens with a Q-Tip as opposed to using one of those cleaning disks.

Regardless of whether it is indeed dead or not you should jump into the next gen anyhow :D

7 years old means you have the larger model with the 'troubled' DVD drive...

yes the 'disc cannot be read' is fatal...

i went through 1 of those...

the good news is the new model, the slim one with the built in NIC, has a much better DVD drive setup in it... and it's around $120...

but you could go PS3 and upscale your PS2 games...

Yes, good luck with that. Finding one with BC that is.

I'd suggest getting a new PS2. They're everywhere, super cheap, and will play all your games.

i've been playing my PS2 titles on the PS3 for a year... i still buy PS2 titles... i migrated all my PS2 save game data to the PS3 flawlessly...

haven't had a single issue and they look better...

so i'm not sure where the 'good luck' sentiment comes from...

there are, according to sony, PS2 games that won't work but i haven't seen one yet...

I had this problem and I ended up opening the box and using a little gear to bring the lens up (or something like that) and my PS2 has been flawless since... might be worth trying.

I did this like 3 years ago, so I can't remember all the steps... but this little guide looks pretty much like what I did...

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/ps2.ars

It was pretty easy and may be worth a shot.

It comes from the fact that Sony has removed backwards compatibility from the current PS3 SKUs and it is very difficult to find a older model in stores that still will play PS2 games.

Try cleaning with Q-tips and rubbing alcohol. I did this to my PS2 and it's worked ever since. If it doesn't then it's probably shot.

I did this after getting a lot of disc read errors and it's been an improvement (not 100% fix). It actually made it so I could read some discs that I couldn't read for a couple years. I still have problems with some other discs though.