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 June 05th, 2010. Topic will be updated periodically, probably once a month or so.
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. This is nuts.
To begin:
The Top 10
1. Wii Sports - 63.08 million sold 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 - 27.41 million sold 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 - 23.71 million sold I'll admit it: if you had told me that a dog simulator would be in the top three best-selling |
4. Wii Fit - 22.56 million sold 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. |
5. Mario Kart Wii - 22.32 million sales 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? |
6. New Super Mario Bros. - 22.02 million sold 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. |
7. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day - 19.13 million sold 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. |
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 18.94 million sold 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... |
9. Mario Kart DS - 18.09 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. Pokemon Diamond/Pearl - 17.49 Diamond and Pearl are holding onto their top 10 spot by a comfortable margin of 2 million or so units, but that's not as big as it sounds when you consider tha its nearest competitor is selling over a hundred thousand units a week. Diamond and Pearl showed that the Pokemon franchise was still going strong, but it remains to be seen if Black and White will even begin to approximate its sale numbers. |