Playing video games is a popular hobby for billions of people around the world. From early systems, like Atari, to the recent releases of PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and gaming PCs, video games will remain a beloved pastime for years to come. Let's take a look at the cream of the crop with the highest selling video games of all time.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the game that popularized the battle royale genre, has amassed over 75 million sales as of 2021. The figure only accounts for PC and Xbox One sales, the latter of which had a console bundle. As for the number of players, PUBG’s figures are much higher than 75 million.
Wii Sports is a bit of a cheat entry. Bundled with every Wii console, the game “sold” as many units as the Wii, even if the players didn’t want a copy. Again continuing Nintendo’s tradition of piggybacking one product’s sales on the back of another, Wii Sports sold more than 82 million units.
According to Take-Two’s latest earnings report in August 2022, Grand Theft Auto V has sold over 170 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the bestselling games of all time. The figure takes into account all sales of the game across console generations. The main reason it has garnered such success (other than the fact that it has a fantastic single-player mode) is thanks to Grand Theft Auto Online.
Like Tetris, which we’ll get to next, Minecraft sales aren’t clear. The only thing for sure is that the number is high. Between console, mobile, and PC sales, the game has reached over 200 million people. Factoring in the free-to-play mobile title, Minecraft has a player base of nearly 500 million.
Tetris sales are a moving target and difficult to track. The physical game has sold nearly 70 million copies (35 million with the Game Boy release). But when we consider the paid downloads for the Tetris mobile game, it rises quickly to the top. In a 2014 interview, VentureBeat reported 425 million paid downloads of Tetris’ mobile app.