The Top 15 Best-Selling PC Games Of All Time
The Top 15 Best-Selling PC Games Of All Time
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The Top 15 Best-Selling PC Games Of All Time
Putting together a list like this isn't easy. Sales figures are often released by title, with no breakdown across platform. Thus, it's actually really hard to assemble the best-selling PC games into order. Nevertheless, you're going to feel some nostalgia, a little bit of love, and a whole lot of angst because, even with a lot of deserving releases on this list, many get left off.
Without further ado, we present the top 15 best-selling PC (and Mac) games of all time, based on a long list of sources. There are some old favorites here, and some new classics-to-be. A few of the titles might surprise you, so have a look!
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I don't mind a bit of lively debate, but please keep your comments constructive or they will be deleted. Personal attacks do not help. If you want to call our choices into account, I'll be happy to listen and perhaps create a part 2 of this series.
Cheers,
Andrew Ku
TomsHardware.com
I don't mind a bit of lively debate, but please keep your comments constructive or they will be deleted. Personal attacks do not help. If you want to call our choices into account, I'll be happy to listen and perhaps create a part 2 of this series.
Cheers,
Andrew Ku
TomsHardware.com
"It's exactly the same as the iPad 2 except for the screen, but is heavier, thicker, runs hotter, has reduced battery life..."
"Shut up and take my money!"
Forgive me if I inserted the wrong picture, but I do believe the title says StarCraft II, which matches the StarCraft II picture.
I suppose I could have just made it 12 million, but we were looking at retail sales, not subscription figures cause that would really mess things up. Does 1 month of subscription = 1 sale? Not exactly. 1 month is like 15 bucks and a boxed game costs 50 odd bucks. That was why it was retail sales only. We should probably do a separate most popular MMORPGs list to cover that unique side of the gaming business.
As for Wiki, it turns out, a significant number of those sources are misquoted. For example, Battlefield 2 didn't sell 11 million. The original statement by EA games referred to Bad Company series, and the BBC source wasn't a gamer and assumed Bad Company was BF2.
Perhaps you're right, but then we'd have to also realign other game sales to compensate for that digital numbers, and that's difficult to do so. Valve for example doesn't publish their Steam sale data, and neither does EA for Origin. Even though it would be in their interests to do so.
As specifically for WoW, there's been a long running thread on this at http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/924016-Sales-numbers-for-Wow-and-X-pacs-do-not-match-the-12-million-subs . While I don't necessarily trust VGChartz when it comes to PCs, the various forum post include arguments from both camps.
I think you raise some excellent points, and it's perhaps something we should try to address better next time.
I've played a few of these games. The Sims I wasted too much time with. Starcraft I did not even legitimately beat. SimCity 3000 I invested plenty of time into. The unlimited version at least.
Anyways the picture for SimCity 3000 doesn't come from it. It looks like it comes from something much newer such as maybe SimCity 4 (never played don't know) or that yet-to-be released one.
As of 2008, I think the Civ series as a whole was 8 million. Don't quite remember the breakdown across each title though. They sold well in the first year, but some other games had better staying power so to speak, as far as sales go. I still think the earlier Civ games are a lot of fun myself.
Yeah it was nearly all consoles according to NPD. But while BF3 did better on PCs, MW3 had better total sales cause console sales tipped the scales in its favor... sad I know.