The first video games in history cannot be found in the ranking of the best sellers for the simple reason that they did not even have a commercial use: they were conceived for display or exhibition in academic institutions or sporadic events.
As we will see later, the level of popularity of video games does not necessarily correspond to sales as the industry’s business model and forms of monetisation have evolved.
All in all, let’s take a look at which are the best-selling video games in history.
Best-selling video games in history
As of August 2024 and according to IGN data, the best-selling video game title in history is… Tetris.
Let’s find out which are the other five video games that are among the best-selling video games in history and some of their main characteristics.
1 Tetris
With more than 500 million copies sold, this extremely popular logic videogame is crowned as the game with the highest sales volume in history.
Born in 1984 in the USSR, it was created for the Elektronika 60 computer by the computer engineer Alekséi Pázhitnov. As explained on the game’s official website, the creator named it after a combination of the word ‘tetra’ (‘four’ in Greek) and ‘tennis’ (his favourite sport). After settling in the United States, Pázhitnov founded The Tetris Company in 1996.
But why ‘tetra’? Well, because the distinctive feature of this game is that the seven different geometric pieces that must be arranged by the players as they fall from the top are formed precisely by four squares.
Specifically, these geometric pieces are called tetrominoes (a combination of ‘tetra’ and dominoes), being part of a larger set known as polyominoes, geometric objects formed from the union of different squares of the same size. Depending on the number of squares that make up the figure, we can speak of monominoes (one square), dominoes (two), trominoes (three) and so on.
Game Boy’s popularity
But back to Tetris, the fact that it is available on a large number of video game consoles and computer operating systems, as well as other types of devices (from mobile phones to PDAs and even graphing calculators) has made its popularity enormous, although its popularity soared when it became one of the most widely used games on the Game Boy, Nintendo’s portable video game console born in 1989.
Over the years, numerous variants of this puzzle video game have emerged with strong links to mathematics and which, due to its characteristics, manages to overcome any kind of cultural or linguistic barrier.
2 Minecraft
Launched on 17 May 2009 – a date that coincides with Internet Day – Minecraft has sold more than 300 million copies, a figure that includes those accumulated on the different platforms, which places this game in second position in the ranking of the best-selling games.
Developed by Markus Persson at the Swedish company Mojang Studios (a company acquired in 2014 by Microsoft), this ‘open world’ construction game (also known as sandbox) had its first stable version two years after its launch on 18 November 2011.
As stated on its own website, Minecraft is based on ‘gathering resources’, ‘surviving the night’ and ‘creating fantastic objects’ in a game where ‘every game is different’ through ‘unforgettable adventures around the corner’.
3 GTA V
Gran Theft Auto V (also known as GTA V or GTA 5) was released in September 2014 and is also open-world, but in the action-adventure category, and has amassed over 200 million sales.
Belonging to a saga of video games born in 1997 (Grand Theft Auto), GTA 5 has the particularity of being the best-selling video game in history for computer and console.
Although the fifth instalment of the saga alone has sold more than 200 million units, as mentioned above, the saga as a whole amounts to some 430 million, with the sixth instalment expected in 2025.
The game’s narrative is set in the fictional city of Los Santos and with a budget of 260 million dollars it is one of the most expensive video games in history.
According to the Pan European Game Information (PEGI) system, it is an 18+ game.
4 Wii sports
Released in November 2006, and with 83 million copies sold, Wii sports is the best-selling video game in history exclusive to a single platform.
As its name suggests, it is a sports game developed by Nintendo and included in the launch of the Wii, a video game console also marketed in 2006.
Baseball, bowling, boxing, golf and tennis are the five sports disciplines featured in this video game that supports up to four players per game – depending on the sport – ‘using the Wii Remote in all (disciplines) to achieve natural, intuitive and realistic sensations’.
5 PUBG: Battlegrounds
The fifth best-selling video game is PUBG: Battlegrounds, with more than 75 million units, a figure that has remained virtually unchanged since the game became free-to-play in 2022. Launched in 2017, it belongs to the online multiplayer battle royale genre.
With the curiosity that its mobile version surpassed 1 billion downloads in 2021, in the game up to a hundred players parachute onto an island in a battle royale in which the aim of the game is to be the last one alive.
According to the PEGI system, this video game is recommended for ages 16 and over.
6 Mario Kart 8
One of the great historical sagas of the video game industry is Super Mario Kart. One of the instalments of the popular plumber brothers Mario and Luigi – Mario Kart 8 – has sold more than 70 million games, making it one of the top 6 best-selling video games.
But it is true that the enormous popularity of the character and the saga as a whole -since the Super Mario Bros launched by Nintendo in the 80s- has made it the highest-selling in history, with almost 900 million copies overall.
Mario Kart 8 was released in 2014 as part of the Mario Kart series of video games, a spin-off of Super Mario, the first of which, Super Mario Kart, was released in 1992.
Popular video games
Apart from Tetris, the rest of the best-selling video games are from the 21st century, although some of them may be part of a saga that originated in the 20th century.
However, among the most popular video games we cannot fail to mention some from the last century, such as Pac-Man (1980), Final Fantasy (1987), Sonic the Hedgehog (popularly known as Sonic, from 1991), FIFA (1993) or Counter Strike (1999).
In the 21st century we find Pro Evolution Soccer (2001), League of Legends (2009, a game converted into an eSport that attracted more than 70 million spectators in 2022) and Fortnite (2017).
