Here Are The Five Best-Selling Video Games Of All Time

The video game industry continues to grow ever larger, each year bringing new blockbuster hits. But when we’re looking at the best-selling games of all time, it’s a mix of classics and current-generation staples. Some have stood the test of time, others very much seem to be products of their era. But all have achieved tens or even hundreds of millions in sales, and are unlikely to be unseated any time in the near future.

5. Super Mario Bros. (40+ million)
This is not the series as a whole, this is literally Super Mario Bros, the first game in Nintendo ’s acclaimed series released for the NES. It’s a true classic, and has the sales to match, yet you might be surprised to learn it is not the best-selling Nintendo game on this list. The game was originally bundled with many NES systems, which is one of the reasons it’s so high up, despite being so old, and this figure does not include sales of re-releases or the Virtual Console.

4. Grand Theft Auto V (65 million)

Perhaps the most “traditional” game on the list, a AAA blockbuster where most copies were sold for a full $60, GTA 5 is one of the most impressive stories in gaming  history, racking up 65 million sales which dwarf the likes of competition from Call of Duty, Pokémon, Assassin’s Creed, nearly any other game you can think of. The series has been a lightning rod of controversy for ages now, but it only serves to make each new installment more popular than the last. Currently, GTA 5 is a money-printing machine due to GTA Online microtransactions, figures that are separate from the already impressive sales of the base game.

3. Wii Sports (82.78 million)
Here it is, the Nintendo game that has outsold Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong and all the rest. A collection of sports minigames that employed the Wii’s motion control system. You are correct to suspect that the reason Wii Sports is so high on this list is because it was indeed packaged with nearly every Wii system sold. And when there were over 100 million Wiis sold by the end of its lifecycle, that’s a lot of sales for its flagship game. It’s unknown what other Nintendo property will ever hope to eclipse this total, as right now, nothing else is even close.

2. Minecraft (106.86 million)
What happens when you make a wildly popular indie game available for nearly every device on earth? It sells over a hundred million copies. Minecraft made its founder, Markus “Notch” Persson a billionaire, thanks to its initial success on PC, which soon turned into success on mobile, consoles and pretty much anything else with a screen. Minecraft is still hugely popular, particularly among a younger crowd who has grown up with it as a gaming staple, and now after being purchased by Microsoft MSFT +%, it isn’t likely to be going anywhere soon.

1. Tetris (495 million)
Does this really need any explanation? It’s Tetris, perhaps the most classic video game of all time. It’s been released for practically every gaming device in history, from the Commodore 64 to iOS and Android phones today. Tetris is essentially immortal, and while its 495 million copies are not $60 box copies, it seems almost impossible that anything will ever match its grand total.

http://www.forbes.com
By Paul Tassi