Top 40 best selling franchises ever! (all over 10 million)

[Bodhesatva]

Erik Aston said:
Lineage topped 3 million subscriptions at one point, and Lineage II topped 1 million. So its probably a 10-million selling franchise at a minimum.

But no way it sold 43 million unique games. Even if both games came out in 1998, and Lineage sold 3 million copies and Lineage II 1 million copies every single year, they'd only reach 40 million this year. Clearly they are inflating the number through total subscriptions somehow (bulk subscriptions from internet cafes, renewed subscriptions from existing players, etc).

Erik, if your estimations are that Lineage topped 3 million / 1 million users, and therefore sold ten million games, how can Warcraft be stuck at 19 million when WoW alone had 8.5 million base game / 4 million expansion pack?

Warcraft III sold well over 5.5 million units. Just adding this up, we get:

8.5 + 4 + 5.5 = 18 million. This doesn't include Warcraft II, it doesn't include Warcraft I, it doesn't include the expansion for Warcraft III, and most importantly, it doesn't assume there are additional sales of WoW than the total max subscriber base (a la what you have calculated with Lineage). Even with all these major omissions, the total I've calculated is already close to your total.

I suspect 30 million is much closer than 20 million.

/end Warcraft nerd rant