It's literally explained

[
Based on

- Influence to the industry
- Popularity
- Continuity
- Revenue
- Impact Worldwide
- Diversity
- Status Quo
]

I respect Doom. Although it wasn't the first FPS, it definitely influenced the industry in many ways. However, this list isn't based solely on impact to the industry. Cuz if that was the case I'm going to have to include like Pong or something. We have to account for other factors like how popular it is, how valuable, how relevant is it today. Pick a complete random person in the world. Would they know Doom? Or Call of Duty. More people would know Call of Duty. Unfortunately Doom is not well known in Asia or amongst casual gamers for example. This is also why Metroid won't be on the list.

I'm not a fan of Call of Duty either, but I don't think you understand how difficult it is to reach that level of success, expand, and maintain it. Doom wasn't able to do it. 

There are games like Subway Surfers (the most downloaded game ever) but it's not as impactful, poor revenue. AmongUS, insanely popular for like one year but faded away quickly and became a fad. The "top franchise" are ones that exceeds in all the points mentioned above.

I did give some answers to the definition of franchise so take a look if you have the time and interest. 

Smash Bros is definitely arguable, but I don't think it's that complicated. Smash Bros is its own franchise just think of it like the Avengers. It all comes down to how it's marketed, if the publishers market it as a franchise.

I'm not sure why you have both Fortnite and PUBG. Sure, PUBG sold pretty well, but Fortnite has long since eclipsed it and has endured for years now, becoming the iconic game of an era.

Including PUBG on this list is like including something like Hydlide on the list. Sure, Hydlide was popular and influential in the mid-80's, but its time in the spotlight was so short that it's hard to say that it stands out from the likes of Dragon Quest or Legend of Zelda.

Besides that, I'd argue that GTA should be above Call of Duty. Both have sold similar amounts, but GTA has set the bar for open word games several times, whereas Call of Duty, though popular, didn't do very much to xpand the FPS genre, war games, online multiplayer, etc (at least when we consider that Halo and Medal of Honor did much of the work for it).

I would also like to nominate Dragon Quest for at least an honorable mention. Its popularity may be limited outside of Japan, but you have to give it credit for making the JRPG sub-genre, making the greater RPG genre mainstream, genre and being a prominent force in said genre for decades since, regularly defining what the genre is.

Although Fortnite has completely passed its peak, it is still one of the most played and top grossing games today. It became like Roblox in a way. You just aren't aware because you don't see it as much. Same for PUBG, but significantly bigger on mobile. Yes I am counting mobile, they are still games. PUBG is Top 10 because it found a massive audience in China becoming the top grossing on mobile constantly. Both franchise has passed $10 billion in lifetime revenue according to evaluations, which not many franchises has done. 

GTA hasn't seen a new proper game for like 10 years. In those 10 years, Call of Duty has achieved massive success consistently. If we look at success per game, GTA takes it. But CoD also has a successful mobile game which GTA doesn't. This gave it a boost in popularity in regions where mobile gaming is huge (mainly southeast asia).
*To be clear here, I'm not just rating it on which franchise has more wins in each category or anything, but for reference.

CoD > GTA in total copies sold. CoD: apx. 425m, GTA: apx. 400m
CoD > GTA global reach
CoD >= GTA in revenue from estimations using official report
CoD >= GTA status quo
GTA > CoD impact to industry

It depends on how well GTA 6 does and how long till it releases. Overall, CoD is above GTA in today's world, but I assume GTA would pass it easily IF a new game from the franchise releases.

I'm glad you mentioned Dragon Quest it's a good one. It became a cultural phenomenon in Japan and it was rare to see someone that didn't know what it is at its peak. Its effect on the industry is pretty massive and can't be ignored. Also has generated huge revenue despite only coming from Japan. The franchise did a good job keeping relevancy, but hasn't seen growth since its peak. Perhaps even declining in popularity to the point many youngsters in Japan don't know what it is. Like you mentioned, it failed to find an audience globally (although they probably didn't even try).  Global reach is valued for this list because there are multiple massive franchises only popular in certain countries or regions. Those are difficult to put it in the Top 10 if we are talking about the Top franchise in the world. Since we are talking about Japan, both Monster Strike and Puzzle Dragons is just as massive, if not bigger than Dragon Quest. They all didn't find success overseas however. In China Arena of Valor is the biggest game, nobody knows what that is including me overseas.

I think it depends on how well DQ12 does. 

I'm going to give my own go at it, but will try to do it sort of "scientifically." Not really, but I'm going to TRY to use some objective factors.

Step 1: Eliminate every franchise below a certain number of sales, as a rough measure of success and popularity. I'm going with 50 million as an arbitrary large number that still leaves us with a few dozen franchises. This doesn't take things like arcade revenue or free-to-play games into account, but what am I going to do?

Step 2: It's hard to determine how you can call a game "influential," so I'm going with a bit of a weird way to measure it. I'll be going to the website TV Tropes and using their articles on "Trope Makers," which would be games/series that created concepts, and "Trope Codifiers," which popularized and/or provided a framework for future works.

Step 3: This one is a bit arbitrary, but I'm going to discount any "franchise" that's basically "one big hit and its spinoffs." I feel that games like Minecraft, for example, would be better reserved for "Top GAME" list instead of a Franchise list.

This already leaves us with just 20 series:

• Borderlands
• Call of Duty
• Dragon Quest
• Elder Scrolls
• Final Fantasy
• Grand Theft Auto
• Halo
• Legend of Zelda
• Mario
• Metal Gear
• Pokemon
• Resident Evil
• Sonic
• Street Fighter
• Super Smash Bros.
• Tekken
• Tetris
• Tomb Raider
• Warcraft
• Worms

From here, it's a matter of comparing these 20 franchises directly against one another. I think most of us could agree that some of these franchises deserve more recognition than others (shoutout to Worms for getting this far). OP mentioned criteria such as modern prevalence and worldwide vs. regional appeal, but you could just as easily have something else in mind.

In no particular order, I'd pick Call of Duty, Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Legend of Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Tetris, and Warcraft. I'm picking these because each of these series have either been major industry forces for a long time across platforms and regions. With that being said, I wouldn't argue with somebody who put Sonic, Tekken, or Halo on their Top 10.

I don't think I need to justify any particular game in the prior paragraph, but feel free to reply if you want me to elaborate.

Good list, didn't know about the TV trope website so that's interesting. 

Does PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) deserve a top10 spot?

While Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest dont get a mention?  ; _ ;

As much as it pains me, LoL has like 151m active (monthly) players according to a quick google search.
I think its fair its there, its been popular for along time.

Mario
Mario Kart
Pokemon
Zelda
Soulsborne
Final Fantasy
Call of Duty
Fortnite
Halo
GTA

Hence why I also added "game series that are known mostly or entirely from just one single entry." Like, all the various spin-offs & sequels of Tetris are barely remembered and barely sold compared to the original. Minecraft's spin-offs were blips on the radar compared to the original, with mixed reception and relatively unimpressive sales.

To go beyond video games, think of how many classic films had sequels that were nowhere near as successful and have been largely forgotten. Nobody thinks "That's an all-time classic film franchise" regarding, say, The Sting or Saturday Night Fever. It's the original classic that's remembered and appreciated, and not the sequel that bombed in theaters, was hated by critics & audiences when it was new, and has since been relegated to footnote status/trivia night fodder ("This popular 1973 caper film had a lesser-known sequel starring Jackie Gleason").

Also, "it has a port with some slight differences" is an extremely low threshold for counting something as a franchise, as is "it's a game that got some updates."

In any case, I don't think recent popularity alone is a sufficient criteria to justify putting just any series in a list of all-time franchises. The ones I included in my list were based on the following criteria (in no particular order):

1) Massive and consistent popularity over many distinct, individual releases. They have all collectively sold enough copies to warrant a place in the best-selling franchises of all time, and many if not most games in their respective series were extremely popular, being among the best-selling games of all time or at bare minimum the best-selling in their particular genre.

2) Staying power. Related to the above, they have remained culturally relevant series decades after their debut, and continue to get new releases. CoD is the youngest series in my list, as it's just a few months short of its 20th anniversary. The average age of the franchises in my list is 30 years.

3) Impact on the industry. They weren't just popular games. They were important games, being incredibly influential on the development of the medium. They all set industry standards, and four of the entries were largely or entirely responsible for putting entire console brands on the map. They also brought further mainstream attention to games, with most of them spawning massive multimedia empires, including movies, TV shows, and endless amounts of merch.

Under these criteria, Minecraft, PUBG, Fortnite, and League of Legends don't deserve a spot in the list. Sure, Minecraft is the best-selling game of all time (being only $30 and available on every platform probably helped), PUBG & Fortnite are popular and have popularized battle royale modes in shooter games, and League is the most popular MOBA and popularized that genre. But in each case it's just a single release that's gotten all the attention, and they're still relatively new IPs. They may be hugely popular within their niche and with that single title, but they have yet to prove themselves in the way other series have in terms of repeated success across multiple releases, longevity as franchises, and historical importance to the industry. They may warrant a spot at some point, but not yet, though I could see them fitting into the bottom half of a Top 30 list. But if we limit it to just a Top 10, then at best they deserve an honorable mention.

Oh, and speaking of honorable mentions, I'd like to include Doom (popularized the FPS genre and set standards for said genre for the remainder of the 90s), The Legend of Zelda (highly influential for 3D action-adventure games), and Dragon Quest (immensely popular in Japan, and was the inspiration for later JRPGs).