Best-Selling Video Games of All Time

Data

Note: What You Should Know About the Best-Selling Video Games

The Absolute Heavyweights

Look at the top of this chart and one game towers over everything else: Tetris at 520 million. That number is so big it feels unreal, but there's a good reason for it. Tetris has been sold and bundled on virtually every platform ever made over four decades — from the original Game Boy and NES to modern phones, tablets, and smart TVs. Just below it sits Minecraft (~400 million), which keeps growing year after year thanks to constant updates, massive Java and Bedrock player bases, cross-platform play, and generation after generation of kids (and adults) buying new copies on new devices. Grand Theft Auto V crashes in at around 230 million, fueled by the hugely profitable GTA Online that keeps the game selling over a decade after launch.

Bundled Games Are Cheating — But Not Really

Two of the biggest names on this list quietly rode along inside a box with a console: Wii Sports (82.9 million) came packed in with every new Wii sold, and Wii Fit / Plus (43.8 million) shipped with a balance board peripheral. Sales counted with a console purchase still count as sales, but it's worth knowing that "units sold" for these titles tracks bundles and hardware tie-ins, not just people who walked into a store specifically to buy the disc. That's part of why Nintendo shows up so often — seven of the top fifteen games are Nintendo titles, and many of them lean on bundled hardware, evergreen family appeal, and first-party quality.

Mario Kart, the Quiet Franchise Champion

You might be surprised that the second-most successful racing game of all time is also one of the most reliable money-makers in history. Mario Kart 8 / Deluxe (79.54 million) got a second life on the Nintendo Switch through the Deluxe re-release, which outsold the original Wii U version by a mile. It keeps Nintendo's sales charts topped whenever a new wave of Switch owners comes in — typically in the final week of a calendar year when consoles are under Christmas trees.

What Does "Sold" Actually Mean?

• Units shipped vs. units sold: Publishers often report "shipped" (sold to retailers and platforms) rather than "sell-through" (bought by actual players). Shipments are the higher, cheerier number.
• Bundles count: If a game ships inside a console box, it's counted as a unit even if the player would've bought any launch title.
• Free-to-play changes the game: Huge free titles like Fortnite, Roblox, or Candy Crush have hundreds of millions of players but don't "sell" copies the traditional way, so they rarely appear on lists like this even when they're more played than anything here.
• Digital vs. physical: Modern listings include digital downloads, which made late sales easier to track — and easier to keep growing for games like Minecraft.
• Terraria (70 million) is a standout: a humble 2D indie that out-sells most AAA blockbusters purely through long-tail sales and deep content updates.

Battle Royal Boom & Classic Icons

PUBG: Battlegrounds (75 million) kicked off the battle-royale craze and remains a genuine sales success (even though its biggest rival, Fortnite, plays by free-to-play rules). Meanwhile, old classics never truly die: Super Mario Bros. (58 million) from 1985 and Pokémon Red / Blue / Yellow (47.44 million) from 1996 still sit in the top fifteen decades after release. The Sims (50 million) and Animal Crossing: New Horizons (49.91 million) prove that cozy, creative simulation games hold enormous appeal, with New Horizons famously selling like hotcakes during 2020's stay-at-home era.

Quick Fun Facts

• Tetris has been ported to more platforms than almost any other game ever made — including the NES, Game Boy, and even the Tesla in-dash display.
• Minecraft is the best-selling video game by any reasonable modern measure, and its popularity is remarkably steady across age groups.
• Grand Theft Auto V outsold every other AAA game of its generation combined at launch, and GTA Online kept it selling for more than a decade.
• Wii Sports was the #1 selling game on the Wii by a landslide precisely because every console shipped with it.
• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's Switch sales alone account for the bulk of that 79.54 million figure — original Wii U sales were just a fraction of it.
• Super Mario Bros. and Pokémon are both older than most of the players still buying their sequels today.
• The Witcher 3 (65 million) became one of the most successful RPGs ever, helped by hit Netflix adaptations and glowing critical reviews.

Why Rankings Can Shift

Numbers on lists like this move all the time. Publishers update figures annually, and whether a publisher counts bundles, digital copies, and free-to-play installs can swing a ranking. So treat a top-ten list as a snapshot in time — the story it tells about evergreen family games (Nintendo), long-tail indie hits (Minecraft, Terraria), and decade-spanning classics (Tetris, GTA V) is far more interesting than the exact order of second and third place.

All figures above align with the sales numbers shown in the chart and data table on this page.