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This is a list of the best-selling video games worldwide, ranked up to 50th place by reported software unit sales. The best-selling video game to date is determined to be Minecraft , a 2011 multi-platform sandbox game created by Markus Persson and developed by Mojang Studios. In October 2023, it became the first video game to sell over 300 million copies. [2] Its closest competitor is a title from Rockstar Games, Grand Theft Auto V , which is the only other video game to have reached both 100 and 200 million copies. The best-selling single-platform game is Wii Sports , with nearly 83 million sales for the Wii console. [a] Before Minecraft, the record for best-selling video game was successively held by two Nintendo titles: Super Mario Bros. and Wii Sports. [4]
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Although some publications, including IGN and GameSpot , have favoured Tetris over Minecraft for being the best-selling video game by combining sales of all its different versions, [5] [6] other sources, including British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Guinness World Records , have analysed this case and rejected the aggregation of all Tetris releases as a single title, causing disagreement over its identification. [2] [3] The 1998 game Snake is estimated to have shipped on over 400 million devices, [7] but is not listed as it was pre-installed and freely accessible on Nokia mobile phones. Another sales issue involves The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim , which game director Todd Howard claims has sold over 60 million copies, [8] is deemed contentious due to Howard's history of making exaggerated statements about his games for promotional purposes. [9]
For this list, standard re-releases, remasters and enhanced versions of games are considered iterative updates to the original, thus their sales are combined. In contrast, remakes generally contain significant deviations from the original and are considered separate products. [10] Likewise, expansion packs are not combined with the base game to avoid inflating sales figures. Additionally, titles with unique release structures are classified based on their specific publishing context. Other metrics, such as "players" or "installs", typically refer to active users engaging with the game rather than sales, thus are not listed; even for paid games, these metrics could include free trials or other free promotions and cannot reliably be substituted for sales figures. [11] [12] Paid bundled titles are also included in this list; their sales often benefit from being packaged with other products, typically at a discounted price. [13]
The listed developers and publishers correspond to each game's original release, and release years refer only to the first full public launch, excluding any pre-release stages. Rankings serve solely for numbering purposes and are not meant to be precise, reflecting the list's limited scope because there is no credible, comprehensive sales-tracking source for the video game industry, [14] unlike for films, which have box office tracking sites such as Box Office Mojo and The Numbers . Tied ranks are resolved using the standard competition ranking method, in which entries with equal figures share the same rank and following ranks are increased based on the number of tied entries.