The Year's Ten Best-Selling Games
by Mark Asher and Tom Chick
You've seen best game lists. You've seen worst game lists.
You've seen dubious achievement lists and you've seen surprise
lists. If you're one of W's confidants, you've seen short
lists of cabinet appointments. If you're one of Al's friends,
you've seen lists of good vacation spots. You may have even
recently rented Schindler's List. We're a bit tired
of lists, so we went for a simpler list that didn't require
us to make a lot of value judgments. We asked PC Data to give
us the hard numbers on the software sales of PC games. So
here they are, PC Data's bestselling games for the year through
the end of October.
We do want to remind you that PC Data's numbers, while perhaps
the best figures anyone can get outside of cracking open a
game company's books, do not cover 100% of the North American
market and cover nothing elsewhere in the world. From talking
to different publishers, we've been told that when you factor
in the world market and niche outlets in North America that
PC Data doesn't cover, you can double PC Data's figures to
get a good rule of thumb idea of actual sales. So think of
the numbers we present as more of a weathervane than a precise
data point.
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Nah, you won't find this game on our list.
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And you really won't find this game on our list.
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Before we get into our countdown, we thought we'd highlight
some interesting numbers for games that didn't make our list.
For example, Hoyle Casino 2000 from Havas didn't make our
list, but it did a brisk business, selling 230,365 copies
and netting $6,151,369. That will buy you a lot of pulls on
the slots in Vegas. Centipede from Hasbro Interactive proved
that oldies are goodies, selling 176,713 copies and making
$2,220,057. That will buy a lot of sneakers for those poor
centipedes. Jane's WWII Fighters did a good job of trying
to convince us that flight sims aren't dead, selling 166,971
copies for a net of $2,500,126. And that will buy you a lot
of Betty Grable posters.
Vampire sucked? Most reviewers liked it on balance, and it
did decent box office, mesmerizing 111,193 people to grab
it and spend $4,884,922. Most reviewers didn't like Imperium
Galactica II, but it did fairly well for a complex strategy
game — 50,843 copies sold for a gross of $2,021,773.
And maybe there is some justice after all. After all, Pong
only sold 50,794 copies for revenues of $738,802.
So are you ready to see numbers 10 and 9? On
to the games!
Special thanks to PC Data
for supplying us with these numbers.
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