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).

So much problems coming out from the perceived definition of "franchises".
Like if we are strictly speaking of a series of games then some of these choices are hugely debatable.

Also if we are going with the current Street Figther debate. I'd say, nowadays and it has been for a long time now. Smash Bros is the most important fighting game series dethroning the former quite easily from revenue and popularity alone.
Though should it be counted as a Mario spin-off? A Kirby spin-off ? It technically heavily inspires itself on the gameplay of Kirby SuperStar which Sakurai previously worked on.

Honestly, too much grey area to cover + I think a Top 10 makes the choices quite reductive.

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).

I strongly agree with this post. It should have more attention.

I mean, when talking about recent time in the recent industry, that’s one thing when mentioning games like Fortnite, but when considering the entire history of gaming, it’s a little premature to consider Fortnite one of the greatest franchises of all time.

When considering historical power as well, a sense of scale has to be considered. To use an analogy with human history: Do we discard Dynastic Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Romans as three of the greatest civilizations in history merely because they fell 1.5 to 2.5 thousand years ago? Or perhaps because they didn’t have the productivity of some modern nations? They were all major superpowers with significant staying power and cultural legacy extending far longer than modern countries. Just like human history, when considering the entire history of games, earlier times can’t be ignored.

If we’re talking about now, sure. But not for all of gaming history.

I doubt even all the Smash Bros games combined have been played as much as Street Fighter. Street Fighter 2 was a phenomenon in the arcade, drastically exceeding any console or PC game of its time in popularity and revenue.

Street Fighter, as a franchise earned over 12.4 billion USD, which is about 3-4 times more than the Smash Bros franchise assuming 50 USD on average per sale. A lot of that occurred during the 1990s while Smash Bros has been bigger since the release of Brawl in 2008; so, factoring inflation, that ratio grows even more in Street Fighter’s favour for revenue.

Street Fighter was undoubtedly a bigger part of the gaming culture as well seeing big success on more platforms and in more formats including comic and film.

So, while Smash bros might be bigger these days, it’s not when comparing their histories as a whole. Especially as a factor of the ratio of popularity over the video gaming industry of its time.

https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Street_Fighter

https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Super_Smash_Bros.

Fornite has 400,000,000 registered users..  80,000,000 players a month and averages  $5,000,000,000 a year in revenue.

Hard to leave it off the list if we are talking impact.

Using human history as an analogy that is like leaving off light speed travel & planetary terraforming because aquaducts.

I’m quite sure all historians have left off light speed travel and planetary terraforming as the greatest civilizations in history. But not because of aqueducts.