Games

The 10 best-selling video game franchises ever

Bow down before video game royalty as we look at 10 of the most popular games in history.

By Mick Fraser

8 min readPublished on 12/28/2016 · 9:00 AM UTC

Cars in Grand Theft Auto — Hail to the Kings
© Rockstar

Gamers might well be fiddling while Rome burns, but 2016 has at least been a fantastic year for games. While we’ve heard the swan songs of a handful of greats like The Witcher and Uncharted, we’ve seen the triumphant return of Gears of War and Deus Ex, and welcomed brave newcomers like The Division.

Now more than ever, the Franchise is king, as sequels follow sequels and remasters plug the gaps. Fledgling developers need to work harder and harder these days to make their new IPs stick, and ensure they’re not simply swept away by the competition.

All of which got us to thinking – not about which franchises have endured the longest, particularly, but about which have been most successful over the years, not just in terms of longevity but in units shifted. As a result, we’ve gone back through the annals of video game history to look at the 10 best-selling franchises ever.

10. Minecraft

Developer: Mojang

First title released: November 18, 2016

Units sold: 106 million

A shot from Minecraft. — It’s just gathering and building, really
© Mojang/Microsoft

At this point, barely half a decade since its global release, it’s hard to imagine what kids did before the advent of Minecraft. They probably went outside or rode bikes, or something equally perplexing. That said, it’s certainly not hard to imagine how Mojang’s genre-defining crafting behemoth has surpassed 100 million sales in such a comparatively short time. At the last count, according to Mojang themselves, Minecraft had shifted 106 million units across all its platforms, a figure made all the more impressive when you consider that Notch’s baby is still so young. With consistent updates and a handful of spin-offs – including the TellTale-developed Story Mode – there’s plenty to go round.

9. Sonic the Hedgehog

Developer: Sega

First title released: June 23, 1991

Units sold: 112 million

Sonic is back — Surely he can run faster than that plane?
© Sega

8. Final Fantasy

Developer: Square

First title released: December 18, 1987

Units sold: 115 million

A shot from Final Fantasy — Noctis considered swapping coffee for Brylcream
© Square-Enix

7. Need for Speed

Developer: EA Canada, Black Box, Criterion, Ghost Games

First title released: August 31, 1994

Units sold: 150 million

Cars in Need for Speed — Coolest license plate ever
© EA

EA’s arcade racer has had its fair share of low-points, and we’re not just talking about the whiffy movie starring Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, either. Over the years Need for Speed has been passed from developer to developer, and some of them have made interesting choices. Anyone remember Need for Speed: The Run? No? You’re better off. But the franchise has also seen some incredibly high-quality entries, and Criterion’s Burnout-alike iterations, Hot Pursuit, Most Wanted and Rivals, are often counted among the best it has to offer. Whatever your preference, 150 million sales prove EA aren’t messing around.

6. The Sims

Developer: Maxis

First title released: February 4, 2000

Units sold: 175 million

A shot of a house in The Sims — Our house, in the middle of our street
© EA

Not many games out there allow you to create entire towns full of people, replete with nightclubs and restaurants, holiday hotspots and love nests and then populate them with little denizens of your own devising. Well, The Sims does. Maxis Games’ fantastically addictive life simulator not only lets you create these characters, but also control every aspect of their lives, from their appearance to their career. Or, if you get bored, you can always just build a wall around them until they starve (we never did that, of course; a friend of ours did). Despite a recent decline in popularity, thanks in part to deviations from the established formula, The Sims has still sold over 175 million copies since the year 2000.

5. Grand Theft Auto

Developer: Rockstar North

First title released: October 1997

Units sold: 240 million

The three central protagonists of Grand Theft Auto V — I told you not to smoke while we were getting gas!
© Rockstar

4. Call of Duty

Developer: Infinity Ward

First title released: October 29, 2003

Units sold: 250 million

These guys from Call of Duty aren't to be messed with — Shooty bang bang
© CallofDuty.com

You can’t keep a good shooter down. It may have its naysayers and detractors, particularly since the dissolution of original series developer Infinity Ward (which has since re-formed, to various degrees of applause), but the Call of Duty series still regularly produces the most pre-ordered game of any given year. We gave up counting how many times it has jumped the shark a long time ago, and these days we just shut up and strap in for the ride, but there was a time when Call of Duty was almost, almost, the flag-flyer for realistic and affecting portrayals of war in video games. Then they added zombies and went to space, but hey, memories. Whatever you may feel about the direction it has taken, 250 million sales (as reported by Polygon earlier this year) don’t lie, and Call of Duty’s intense, twitch-heavy online mode still draws gargantuan crowds from all around the world.

3. Pokémon

Developer: The Pokémon Company

First title released: February 27, 1996

Units sold: 280 million

Characters from Pokemon — What happens when we catch them all?
© The Pokemon Company

2. Tetris

Developer: The Tetris Company

First title released: June 1984

Units sold: 495 million

Falling blocks in Tetris — How can stacking blocks be so popular?
© Tetris.com

Tetris is one of those games that everyone’s dad used to play all the time. How many times did you roll out of bed, slip on your He-Man or She-Ra slippers and wander groggily downstairs to find that your old man hadn’t been to bed yet and was still sitting, blurry-eyed, at the dining table having spent an entire night with your Game Boy? Really? Just us? We don’t believe you. Created and designed by Russian genius Alexey Pajitnov as a game in which to outwit and outfox your opponent, and later brought over to Western audiences by developer Henk Rogers, Tetris became an instant puzzle classic that is still enjoyed today, 33 years after its inception. The sales figures are staggering, too, as Rogers told Venturebeat that around 495 million copies have been sold between the original boxed version and paid downloads since his version launched.

1. Mario

Developer: Nintendo

First title released: July 9, 1981

Units sold: 528.5 million