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This is a list of the best-selling video games of all time. The best-selling video game to date is Tetris , a tile-matching puzzle video game originally released for the Electronika 60 in 1984 and then popularised upon its Game Boy release in 1989. The game has been ported to a wide range of platforms and sold in excess of 170 million copies, including 100 million paid mobile game downloads and 35 million Game Boy version sales. [1] Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V are the only other games to have sold over 100 million copies. The best-selling game on a single platform is Wii Sports , with nearly 83 million sales for the Wii console.
A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a two- or three-dimensional video display device such as a TV screen, virtual reality headset or computer monitor. Since the 1980s, video games have become an increasingly important part of the entertainment industry, and whether they are also a form of art is a matter of dispute.
Tetris is a tile-matching puzzle video game, originally designed and programmed by Soviet Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov. The first playable version was completed on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the Soviet Union in Moscow. He derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra- and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport.
A tile-matching video game is a type of puzzle video game where the player manipulates tiles in order to make them disappear according to a matching criterion. In many tile-matching games, that criterion is to place a given number of tiles of the same type so that they adjoin each other. That number is often three, and these games are called match-three games.
Of the top 50 best-selling video games on this list, over 20 were developed or published by Nintendo, including over half of the top ten. A further five games were published by their affiliate, The Pokémon Company. Other publishers with multiple entries in the top 50 include Activision, Rockstar Games, Electronic Arts, and Sega. Aside from Nintendo's internal development teams, Game Freak is the developer with the most games in the top 50, with six from the Pokémon series. The oldest game in the top 50 is Frogger , which was released in June 1981. Games reported on by player count instead of official sales figures, such as registered accounts, subscriptions, or free-to-play game owners, are not to be included; those belong on the list of most-played video games by player count instead.
Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Kyoto. Nintendo is one of the world's largest video game companies by market capitalization, creating some of the best-known and top-selling video game franchises, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon.
The Pokémon Company is a Japanese company that is responsible for brand management, production, marketing and licensing of the Pokémon franchise, consisting of video game software, a trading card game, anime television series, films, manga, home entertainment products, merchandise, and other ventures. It was established through a joint investment by the three businesses holding the copyright on Pokémon: Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. It began operating in 1998 and adopted the moniker Pokémon Ltd. in October 2000. The company is headquartered in the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower in Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo.
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica. It currently serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. As of January 2017, Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top publisher for 2016 in the United States.
![]() | Game was shipped with a console during its lifetime | ![]() | Sales figure includes paid mobile downloads |
The Game Boy Advance (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001, and in mainland China on June 8, 2004 as iQue Game Boy Advance. Nintendo's competitors in the handheld market at the time were the Neo Geo Pocket Color, WonderSwan, GP32, Tapwave Zodiac, and the N-Gage. Despite the competitors' best efforts, Nintendo maintained a majority market share with the Game Boy Advance.
Mario Kart is a series of go-kart-style racing video games developed and published by Nintendo as spin-offs from its trademark Super Mario series. The first in the series, Super Mario Kart, was launched in 1992 on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System to critical and commercial success.
A video game console is a computer device that outputs a video signal or visual image to display a video game that one or more people can play.
The fifth-generation era refers to computer and video games, video game consoles and video game handhelds from approximately 1993 to 2002. For home consoles, the best-selling console was the PlayStation by a wide margin, followed by the Nintendo 64 and then the Sega Saturn. For handhelds, this era was characterized by significant fragmentation, because the first handheld of the generation, the Genesis Nomad, had a lifespan of just two years, and the Virtual Boy had a lifespan of less than one. Both were discontinued before the other handhelds made their debut. The Neo Geo Pocket was released in 1998, but was dropped by SNK in favor of the fully backwards compatible Neo Geo Pocket Color just a year later. Nintendo's Game Boy Color was the winner in handhelds by a large margin. There were also two updated versions of the original Game Boy: Game Boy Light and Game Boy Pocket.
Nintendo Selects is a marketing label used by Nintendo to promote video games on current Nintendo game consoles that have sold well. Nintendo Selects titles are sold at a lower price point than other games. The program parallels other budget range software by Sega, Sony, and Microsoft to promote best-selling games on their consoles as well. In Japan, the discount label was introduced in 2015 for various Nintendo 3DS titles as the "Happy Price Selection," although South Korea adopted the Nintendo Selects name at an earlier period.
Pokémon is a series of video games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo as part of the Pokémon media franchise. First released in 1996 in Japan for the Game Boy, the main series of role-playing video games (RPGs), also referred as the "core series" by their developers, has continued on each generation of Nintendo's handhelds.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is a crossover sports and party game developed by the Sega Sports R&D Department. It was published by Nintendo in Japan and by Sega in other regions, released on the Wii in November 2007 and the Nintendo DS handheld in January 2008. The first official video game of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, it is licensed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) through exclusive licensee International Sports Multimedia (ISM), and is the first official crossover game to feature characters from both the Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog series.
The Japanese multinational consumer electronics company Nintendo has developed seven home video game consoles and multiple portable consoles for use with external media, as well as dedicated consoles and other hardware for their consoles. As of September 30, 2015, Nintendo has sold over 722.22 million hardware units.
A home video game console, or simply home console, is a video game device that is primarily used for home gamers, as opposed to in arcades or some other commercial establishment. Home consoles are one type of video game consoles, in contrast to the handheld game consoles which are smaller and portable, allowing people to carry them and play them at any time or place, along with microconsoles and dedicated consoles.
Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games is a 2011 sports and party game developed by Sega Japan. As with the previous two Mario & Sonic titles, it was published by Nintendo in Japan and by Sega in all other regions. The game is officially licensed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) through exclusive licensee International Sports Multimedia. It is the third installment in the Mario & Sonic series after the commercial success of its predecessors and is an official video game of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. The game was released on the Wii on November 15, 2011 in North America, November 17, 2011 in Australia, November 18, 2011 in Europe, and December 8, 2011 in Japan. It was also released for the Nintendo 3DS in February 2012. The game is the first, and the only one to come in a yellow keep case instead of a standard white case, similar to how New Super Mario Bros. Wii was the only game to have a red keep case. The Wii version, like the original 2007 Olympic Games version, does not support the Balance Board; the 2009 Winter Olympics version does.
The year 2014 saw the release of numerous games, including new installments for some well-received franchises, such as Assassin's Creed, Bayonetta, Borderlands, Call of Duty, Castlevania, Civilization, Dark Souls, Divinity, Donkey Kong, Dragon Age, The Elder Scrolls, Elite, Far Cry, Final Fantasy, Forza Horizon, Infamous, Kinect Sports, Kirby, LittleBigPlanet, Mario Golf, Mario Kart, Metal Gear, MX vs. ATV, Ninja Gaiden, Persona, Pokémon, Professor Layton, Shantae, Sniper Elite, Sonic the Hedgehog, Strider Hiryu, Super Smash Bros., Tales, The Sims, Thief, Trials, Tropico, Wolfenstein and World of Warcraft. In addition, it saw the release of many new intellectual properties, such as Destiny, Five Nights at Freddy's,Sunset Overdrive, Titanfall, The Evil Within and Watch Dogs. Many awards went to games such as Bayonetta 2, Dark Souls II, Destiny, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mario Kart 8, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. Amiibo from Nintendo was also released this year.
Pokkén Tournament is a fighting game developed by Bandai Namco Studios and published by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.. The game combines gameplay elements from Bandai Namco's Tekken series with characters from Nintendo's Pokémon franchise. It was released for Japanese arcades in July 2015, and worldwide for the Wii U in March 2016. An enhanced port for the Nintendo Switch, titled Pokkén Tournament DX, was released in September 2017.
The Nintendo Switch, commonly abbreviated as the Switch, is a video game console developed by Nintendo and was released on March 3, 2017. It is a hybrid console that can be used in both stationary and portable settings. In the home console mode, the main unit is inserted onto a docking station to connect to a television screen or monitor. Alternatively, for portable use, it can be removed from the dock and operated similarly to a tablet computer through its LCD touchscreen. It can also be placed in a standalone tabletop mode visible to several players. Its wireless Joy-Con controllers, which include standard buttons and directional analog sticks for user input, motion sensing, and high-definition tactile feedback, can attach to both sides of the console to support handheld-style play. They can also connect to a Grip accessory to provide a traditional home console gamepad form, or be used individually in the hand like the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, supporting local multiplayer modes. The Nintendo Switch's software supports online gaming through standard Internet connectivity, as well as local wireless ad hoc connectivity with other Switch consoles. Nintendo Switch games and software are available on both physical flash-based ROM cartridges and digital distribution via Nintendo eShop; the system does not use region locking. The Nintendo Switch competes on the console gaming market with contemporaries being Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4.