Video games are one of the world’s most beloved pastimes, having been a staple in homes across the globe for the last 40 years. Today’s games are marvels of modern engineering, made with complex programming and design that takes years to mould together into an end product. Some video games have been so popular that they’ve sold millions upon millions of copies to the public, and became legendary in their own right in doing so.

PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds

PUBG is one of the gaming industry’s biggest successes, bringing the battle royale genre to the forefront, and a massive 50 million sales just by the time that 2018 came to an end, and that number only includes the copies that were sold for the Xbox One and PC. Since then, the game has been launched on the PlayStation 4, and a mobile version is available to download and play, so it’s possible that the actual sales are much higher, although no official number has been released. The company has confirmed, however, that there are over 400 million players in total, of which 350 million are based on mobile, on similar platforms used when betting on your favourite NRL team, but including the this in total sales wouldn’t be fair as the mobile version is free to download.

Wii Sports

Wii Sports is a bundled game that was released alongside the Wii console, meaning that the total sales number mirrors the amount of consoles that were sold to the public: around 80 million. It’s a marketing scheme that Nintendo has used in the past, pushing out their proprietary games to their players while using the high sales number to inflate its popularity. Despite this, Wii Sports is a popular pastime for many, and has long become a family favourite, although the Wii is no longer in production.

Grand Theft Auto V

The brainchild of beloved games developer Rockstar, the Grand Theft Auto series has always been a player favourite, and the 5th instalment was the biggest yet. Over 120 million copies have been sold worldwide since the game was first released, which takes into account all of the copies that sold across different console generations. Red Dead Redemption 2, their latest release, is quickly catching up, and could overpass it within the next few years.

Minecraft

Official Minecraft sales numbers have never been released, but considering it’s arguably the most popular 3D video game of all time, it’s not hard to imagine that the amount of copies they’ve sold is extremely high, with most agreeing that at least 200 million people own a personal copy of Minecraft. Add another 300 million for the people that play the free mobile version, and it’s almost the king of the hill, although it still comes short when compared to the next entry.

Tetris

Tetris has been around for decades, and the physical game itself was able to sell 70 million copies in total, of which 35 million were part of the Gameboy release in the late 1980s. Tetris has sold at least 400 million copies on mobile, although the total number is difficult to truly calculate as Tetris comes in many shapes and sizes. Regardless, Tetris reigns supreme as the best-selling game of all time.