Bestselling Video Game of All Time

December 28, 2005 6:43 PM

What's the bestselling video game of all time? Boring old Ask Yahoo! takes a very literal approach, offering Super Mario and Pac-Man. But if you think laterally, then shouldn't variations of Tetris, Solitaire and Snake be in the running? If you count all games on all devices and OEM bundles count as sales, what is the bestselling video game of all time?
posted by djacobs to sports, hobbies, & recreation (11 comments total)

If you're including bundles, I would think Solitaire/Minesweeper. There have to have been way more copies of Windows sold than any standalone game.
posted by danb at 6:47 PM on December 28, 2005

Well, there's always Wikipedia. Should we be adjusting for inflation the way (I think) they do with box office numbers?
posted by Gator at 7:13 PM on December 28, 2005

So many variables here... do you care about total gross sales or total unit sales? Are you adjusting for inflation? (this can have an enormous effect on older games - example) Do you count bundled games that otherwise would not have a price? Are you including all game types, or just PC? console? What about coin-op gaming machines? Do you lump all the various games of a franchise into a total, or as individual games?
posted by Rhomboid at 7:37 PM on December 28, 2005

Are you talking about bestselling or most frequently given away? I don't think you could claim that Windows Solitaire ever sold a single copy, it just comes with the operating system, so it doesn't seem fair to compare the number of Windows Solitaire installations to the number of, I don't know, Sims installations, which I hear cost actual money but which people actually want.

To get a good idea of which games were most in demand, I would try to compare non-free, non-download games. Those are the games people are willing to lay out real cash for.

But if you're just asking which game was played (for a few minutes here and there between other things) by the most people, maybe boring old Solitaire or Minesweeper is it.
posted by pracowity at 7:57 PM on December 28, 2005

I remember hearing that for a very long time, Super Mario Bros. 3 was the best-selling cartridge-based game of all-time. That indicates that its numbers eclipsed those of any Atari game. Later, I heard that The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time surpassed those numbers.

I believe my source for both nuggets of info was Nintendo Power.
posted by themadjuggler at 11:27 PM on December 28, 2005

Are you willing to call notepad the bestselling text editor of all time, and wordpad the bestselling word processor of all time, and mspaint the bestselling paint program of all time, and so forth?

Are you going to count every quarter and token dropped into a Street Fighter machine? Why not? Does looking at ads in order to play a game count? If the question is "what single game has generated the most revenue?" then it's very tricky to answer. FF7 sold a lot of Playstaions, for example. And do sales and revenue of Tetris for the GameBoy not count towards the sales and revenue from the Tetris coin-op? Do expansion packs count towards the revenue of the main title?

So to avoid going crazy you probably have to mean something like "what single video game title, as a product in itself, sold the most number of copies?" From Wikipedia it looks like it's still boring old SM3, although The Sims is pretty close.
posted by fleacircus at 5:42 AM on December 29, 2005

I'm sorry I wasn't more focused, but the reality is I want ALL these questions answered.

fleacircus, you make an interesting distinction. Resident Evil 4 sold a lot of gamecubes, Mario Kart a lot of DSes, and FF7 a lot of PS2s, but Snake never sold a Nokia phone.
posted by djacobs at 8:05 AM on December 29, 2005

gta:va sold a LOT of PS2s as well.
posted by jedrek at 8:44 AM on December 29, 2005

Halo (1 ) sold quite a few Xboxes.
posted by haqspan at 9:36 AM on December 29, 2005

The SIMS series has sold over 24 million. 8 million of which was the original.

According to recent news (it's not specific to a game) the DS is the fastest system to reach 5 million units in Japan; 12 months.

According to Wikipedia Super Mario Bros has sold over 40 million copies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best_selling_video_games#Consoles

A lot of people have mentioned inflation but one that hasn't been mentioned is the drastic drop in games. A source was not listed but Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari) was quoted saying " In 1982...there were 44 million gamers. Today, there are 18 million. Where’d they all go? “

This reduction in gamers probably has more to do with the smaller sales numbers.

Ok I know I got off topic a bit, lemme reel it in.

Regarding thinking laterally I don't think you can really consider Solitaire and Snake when you talk about games sold. People aren't really buying the game they are buying a phone or a computer that happens to have that thrown in. You have to set qualifiers for your numbers such as an individually published game (bundles after the fact can be included), etc. I'm sure any numbers you find (such as Wikipedia) will have these qualifiers already established.

You mentioned OEM bundles I'm pretty sure every game publisher includes OEM bundles in it's sales figures.

...whew...
posted by SupaDave at 7:19 AM on December 30, 2005

Thanks everybody!
posted by djacobs at 3:52 PM on December 30, 2005