Credit for topic idea goes to Erik Aston, wherever he is.
This is a list of the 50 best-selling games of the generation, counting only SKUs released on seventh gen hardware - namely the Nintendo DS, the PSP, the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3, and the Wii. Multiplat sales are combined, but sales from Xbox, PS2, Gamecube, or GBA versions are not included wherever that might come up. I have not included versions that differentiate themselves to a very high degree, such as the All-Play games on Wii.
Sales are current with VGChartz Worldwide data as of the week ending September 25th, 2010. Topic will be updated periodically, probably about once a quarter to give the list time to shift around a bit.
Since Erik Aston made his verison of the list, sales have been pretty nuts: most notably, the baseline for making it into the top 50 is now well over 5 million sales, knocking many former placeholders out of the list. Craziness.
To begin:
The Top 10
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1. Wii Sports - 65.34 million sold
Wii Sports stays on top, moving a respectable 2.26 million units since June. No surprises: this damn game isn't going anywhere. June Writeup: This game being here should surprise exactly no one. It's the single most influential piece of video game software this generation, partially or largely responsible for the success of the Wii, and often credited with opening up a whole new breed of gamers to interacting with the medium. It's sold over ten million since this list's progenitor, and at this point nobody's really surprised anymore. |
2. Wii Play - 27.79 million sold
No big surprises here, but sales for this game seem to have finally died off. It was previously unimaginable, but it could end up being outsold in the next year or two. June Writeup: In a way, this is the little game that could - universally panned by critics and often derided by core gamers, Wii Play has managed to claw its way into an unshaking number 2 spot through accessibility, ease of use, and being a nice deal for ten bucks. It's unclear if any other game will be able to shake it from this position in the foreseeable future. |
3. Nintendogs - 23.88 million sold
Nintendogs remains a behemoth, quietly selling 170,000 units since June. It will be interesting to see how it does in the coming holiday season. June Writeup: I'll admit it: if you had told me that a dog simulator would be in the top three best-selling games of the entire generation and probably stay there, I would have thought you were insane. Yet Nintendogs has done just that, appealing to a lot of people who can't have dogs and apparently a lot who can. In a way this game is the poster child of all the new gamers who had never played before. |
| 4. Mario Kart Wii - 23.00 million sold
The impossible has happened, ladies and gentlemen! In selling 680,000 units since June, Mario Kart Wii has surpassed Wii Fit! Land alive, I wasn't entirely sure that would happen. 25 million is a certainty, now. How far can Mario and the gang go? June Writeup: Since the original list was made, this game has sold nearly five million additional copies, which is close to enough to have gotten it into this list all over again. Sales are slowing down, but it's not clear where it will stop - 25 million seems like it should be in the bag, but can it go higher? |
| 5. New Super Mario Bros. - 22.64 million sold
Another one! This game, which had previously been knocked out of the top 5 by Mario Kart Wii, has now passed up Wii Fit to reclaim its spot. Having sold well over half a million units since June and still selling 50,000 units this very week, this game seems to have no end to its legs. It's questionable if anything will be able to knock it out of the top five again. New Super Mario Bros. Wii may never catch up at all! June Writeup: It took forever for the game to get knocked out of the top five, but as it continues to show respectable sales it's unlikely that it will be knocked out of the top ten. This is the highest-selling Mario platformer since the original Super Mario Bros., and it does not look ready to give up that crown for a long time. New Super Mario Bros. Wii has its work cut out for it. |
6. Wii Fit - 22.61 million sold
All right, guys, Wii Fit is finally dead in the water. Selling 50,000 units in the last three months, it's extremely unlikely that this game will ever pass up 23 million sold. Will it ever fall out of the top ten? Not likely, but if Wii Sports Resort and New Super Mario Bros. Wii show holiday legs, it may be knocked down a couple of spots more. June Writeup: This game has managed to hold onto its spot more or less since it released, though now that its sales have finally slowed to a stop we can expect it to begin to drop soon. Mario Kart Wii will pass it up before the summer's out, and from there there's a chance that it will be passed up by several more games. |
| 7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 20.25 million sold 11.62 million 360, 8.63 million PS3 
Turns out that reaching 20 million didn't take long at all. Still the fastest-selling combined SKUs of all time, and will likely remain that way through the end of its first year. It's not clear if this game will ever be unseated in the one-year window. It will be interesting to see what kind of legs the game has after Black Ops releases. June Writeup: With combined SKUs, this is the fastest-selling game of all time. For a while it was doubtful whether or not any game would break Nintendo's stranglehold on the top 10: this game did it in less than eight months, and looks to stay for quite a while. One has to wonder how long it will take to reach 20 million and climb ever higher... |
8. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day - 19.32 million sold
190,000 copies sold since June. Not too shabby at all for a title that's as old as the Touch Generation itself. Sales have become very modest in any given week, but the game shows no signs of stopping and it will almost definitely break 20 million by the end of 2011, barring the 3DS killing it off. June Writeup: Good grief. This game has sold another million units since November, and may end up breaking 20 million before it's finally over and done with. This was the first game of the Touch Generation, and set the tone for Nintendo's return to software dominance. It's not clear if this will end up as its own franchise, but if sales mean anything then it probably should. |
9. Mario Kart DS - 18.51 million sold 
Over 400k units sold since June, this game has actually picked up a lot of steam recently. Its continued future in the top ten is anything but clear, with Mario Kart 3DS likely to steal the wind from its sails, but that says more about how insane sales are this gen than it does about this game. Interesting point of fact: if this game had sold last generation, it would have been the best-selling single SKU, edging out the PS2 version of San Andreas by about 50k copies. June Writeup: The second best-selling racing game of all time after its successor, it continues to sell a respectable amount of copies to this day. For a while the idea of it being pushed out of the top 10 would have seem ludicrous, but Wii Sports Resort and New Super Mario Bros. Wii may push it out within a year. |
| 10. Wii Sports Resort - 17.90 million sold
2.06 million sold since June. If Wii sales in the West are anywhere close to what they were last year, this game will crack 20 million before we ring in the New Year. It will continue to sell until it's either replaced as a bundle or the next Nintendo system comes out. There's no end in sight for this game. June Writeup: This game has been climbing the charts steadily since its debut and will be in the top ten within the year. It sold fantastically as a standalone SKU, but now that it's been bundled with the Wii hardware the sky is the limit, and there's no telling how high it will climb. |
