"The Best-Selling Video Games of All Time"

[Dave47]

Newsweek has the list on their webpage. (http://www.newsweek.com/id/140003)

On first glance the list appears to be completley innacurate. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games) Does anyone know if these numbers are limited to American sales, or are they just made-up numbers?

[idrisz]

It's console games only too..

Guess Newsweek doesn't consider pc games as videogame.

[Dave47]

They also seem not to consider handheld games to be "video games" either, so you're in good company.

[Pogo]

They also have trouble distinguishing "news" from "news."

[MarchHare]

They also call Guitar Hero 3 "an improved variation on an already popular theme first established in 2005." Obviously they've never played any of the GH games, because GH3 was a step backwards in every possible way*.

*Casey Lynch's model excepted

[Dave Long]

The mainstream press never lets a little bit of truth get in the way of them reporting the "facts".

They also don't want to print a list like this one...

Top 20 console games of all time
The 20 best-selling console games, not originally bundled.

1. Pokémon Red, Blue, and Green (Game Boy – 20.08 million approximately: 10.23 million in Japan,[47] 9.85 million in US)[20]
2. Nintendogs (DS – 18.67 million)[78]
3. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES – 18 million)[44]
4. Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (PS2 – 14.89 million shipped)[114]
5. Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (DS – 14.77 million)[78]
6. Pokémon Gold and Silver (Game Boy Color – 14.51 million approximately: 7.6 million in US,[20] 6.91 million in Japan)[47]
7. New Super Mario Bros. (DS – 14.16 million)[78]
8. Super Mario Land (Game Boy – 14 million)[44]
9. Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire (GBA – 13 million)[87]
10. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! (DS – 12.98 million)[78]

...because that probably doesn't suit the expectations of their readers or the agenda of whoever pieced that "article" together.

[idrisz]

Yeah, I bet Newsweek is going to follow up with how violence in games is infiltrating our great nation and subverting our youth.

[Wholly Schmidt]

Does it say somewhere if it's US only? MGS2 has something like 7 million worldwide.

[Kevin Grey]

It's completely wrong. Newsweek said they used a combination of NPD and publisher numbers but failed to realize that the NPD numbers were US only while the publishers numbers were usually worldwide.

[Alan Au]

Minesweeper for the PC. Even better, it came with free operating system software when you bought it.

- Alan

[Sol Invictus]

That list is pretty much rubbish and they most likely wrote it to draw hype on how violent video games are subverting the youth these days, as everyone else here has said.

Starcraft, The Sims, World of Warcraft, all the Pokemon games, most of the Marios, Brain Age, Gran Turismo 3, Lineage 2, Tomb Raider 2, Final Fantasy VII, Wii Sports, Super Smash Brothers Melee, Nintendogs, and MGS have more sales than anything they put up there.

Feh. I can't wait for the follow up article. </sarcasm>

[Robert Sharp]

But assuming they only used US sales, wouldn't it still tell us something about US video game consumers? Which is probably all they want to talk about anyway.

[idrisz]

But assuming they only used US sales, wouldn't it still tell us something about US video game consumers? Which is probably all they want to talk about anyway.


They don't, read Kevin Grey's post..

[Sol Invictus]

But assuming they only used US sales, wouldn't it still tell us something about US video game consumers? Which is probably all they want to talk about anyway.

Even if that were the case, which it isn't, it does seem like they're not taking handheld devices and the PC/Mac platform into account. I'm damn sure that Brain age, The Sims and The Sims 2 sold more copies, even in the US, to any of the games they put on their list.

[Robert Sharp]

Oops. I didn't realize they were adding them or averaging them or something silly. I thought Kevin just meant sometimes it was NPD and sometimes the worldwide ones. Just misunderstood.

[krise madsen]

I find it amazing what a huge gap there still is between the gaming community and the community at large. It is as if gaming was some obscure subculture and not something done by millions of quite ordinary people on a daily basis.

Respectfully

krise madsen

[Johan A]

Didn't alot of the Disney console games like Aladdin for the Genesis sell like 8+M?