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11. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - 13.39 million sold
(7.92M on X360, 4.76M on PS3, .65M on DS, .06M on Wii)
Destined to live forever with GoldenEye and Halo as the console FPS triumvirate of the ages.
It went head-to-head with Halo 3 and crushed it, and took the series from being "pretty popular"
to being bigger than Grand Theft Auto. Now it looks to the new Wii version
to move towards the top 10 and a 15 million final sales tally.
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12. Grand Theft Auto IV - 13.25 million sold
(7.30M on X360, 5.95M on PS3)
On the one hand you could say that this game maintained GTA's massive popularity
on a smaller install base, but on the other, it lost the testosterone game crown to Call of Duty.
With evidence that the next full GTA game will be in Vice City again,
the hype seems to be at an all-time low for this all-time great series.
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13. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games - 11.75 million sold
(7.26M on Wii, 4.49M on DS)
The massive sales of this game didn't transfer to a massive start for the Winter Olympics sequel.
It may have a long tail like the first pairing of gaming's two biggest mascots, but it's still a little
surprising that only 1.25 million people have bought the sequel in the first 5 weeks.
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14. Call of Duty: World at War - 11.40 million sold
(5.96 X360, 3.66 PS3, 1.32 Wii, .46 DS)
Tremendous as a follow-up to Modern Warfare, considering that it came from the JV team
at Treyarch. Nonetheless, Activision has to be wondering if consumers are getting more
savvy about who is developing the games, and if there is now more faith in
the Modern Warfare branding than the Call of Duty brand. Treyarch's
follow-up to this game will certainly be Activision's 2010 tentpole.
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15. Animal Crossing: Wild World - 11.10 million sold
Figuring out why this game sold 11 million copies and the Wii version
sold a fraction of that might be a key for Nintendo to put the funk of
mid-2008 to mid-2009 behind them permanently.
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16. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock - 10.54 million sold
(4.31 Wii, 4.28 X360, 1.95 PS3)
This game sold 15 million including PS2. Guitar Hero 5, DJ Hero and Band Hero have combined
for 2.57 million so far. While that number might double or more over the holidays, executives at
Activision must have a knot in their stomach, knowing they have killed the sacred cash cow.
Holiday 2007, when GHIII and Rock Band came out, will be the time people are talking about
when they say "Remember when music games were awesome?"
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17. Halo 3 - 10.37 million sold
Having completed the "trilogy" with ever-increasing popularity, entries like
Halo Wars and ODST are now the focus for this series, to try to give it consistent
hit-making ability outside of numbered editions. So far the results are iffy, but next year's
Halo Reach is being called out by fans as the non-numbered Halo game to watch.
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18. Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 8.63 million sold
This game is the biggest hit of developer Masahiro Sakurai's career. With the Kirby series
also to him name, Sakurai is already an elite developer in gaming history. If he can strike gold
a third time with his current unannounced Nintendo-backed project, he will have a name
alongside Miyamoto, Yamauchi, Yokoi and Iwata in that company's history.
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19. Super Mario Galaxy - 8.20 million sold
In short, the release of this game may have been the start of the second golden age of Mario.
We have new 2D AND 3D Mario coming out for Wii! Marioboys rejoice.
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20. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 8.15 million sold
(4.94M on X360, 3.21M on PS3)
8 million. Top 20 of the generation. Not counting PC sales.
One.
Week.
What more needs to be said?
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