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The Top 100 Best-Selling PC Games of the Century
Ground Glass writes "They already did this for consoles and handhelds, but now Next Generationhas finished the cycle by releasing a rather more interesting list of the best-selling PC games released since 2000. It's more interesting as, since most everyone has a Windows PC in some form or another, the games that are purchased for it are...rather more esoteric than you'd see being bought on console. You may also notice the sales numbers are quite a bit lower than on the other lists — is this the spectre of piracy given form? In any case, there's plenty of data to interpret here."
These numbers are for the US only. In Sweden at least, the PC is still the number one platform, though if you take all the different consoles and handhelds games taken together that is a bigger market. They people who did this article also admit that they don't count sales by, for instance, Steam.
Penny Arcade summed it up pretty well I think -
"Also, when it was announced that Dark Messiah would be built using the Valve's Source engine, I said that if a publisher of Ubisoft's scale chose to deliver a title through Steam, digital delivery would quickly cease being a novelty. Well, that's happening. One sometimes hears that PC gaming is dead, and then you see something like what Valve is doing with Episode 2 and warmth spreads throughout your entire body - even if their bet is being hedged on next-gen systems. We know how good we have it. But try to find evidence of a strong PC platform at dedicated game retailers and the main thing you will find is that they have no interest in it. The games can't be traded in, and a PC gamer probably doesn't attach guides or peripherals to their purchases at the same rate, so it exists outside the philosophical continuum of their business. I'm aware that many gamers find Steam or other ethereal delivery methods distasteful, and I wonder how long they will have that luxury."
Well, as long as Neverwinter Nights 2 comes, I will be a happy gamer for a looong time.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
And the numbers are also USA only, the charts would go much higher if they were, say, worldwide, or even Japanese only (for example no console game goes above 2.5m sales, in Japan the DS alone has 3 3-million sellers)
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Firstly, it's on half the timeframe of the 90s you cite.
More to the point, it's not a DECLINE, it's just a wider variety of people buying games, resulting in sales of games not purely based on the classic male, 20something gamer formulae. I hate the way people attribute a wider variety of people buying games to a decline..
Also, I saw at least 4 MMORPGs, and you complain about using old games, and yet you refer to the Wing Commander series and the Command and Conquer RTSes. You can't have it both ways...
The lower PC sales have very little to do with piracy. Fiascos like Anarchy Online's non-functional release are what almost killed PC gaming.
I know several people who stopped PC gaming because a) some games are released in a state that doesn't even merit the term "beta" b) Windows is so flaky, buggy, prone to spyware. Gamer does not necessarily imply technical understanding, and console's are so easy. That's why consoles sell more games.
The whole PC gaming genre is only about 20 years old. This list would be far more interestng if they included the biggest-selling, PC games of all time. I don't doubt that The Sims would probably still be in the top spot, but I would be far more intersted to see how the following games fared:
...and countless others. To take the last six years and compile a "most sales" is ludicrous. We're only talking 20 years or so. Would it have been so dreadfully hard to include all of PC gaming history?
- The various Ultima games
- The various Monkey Island games
- The individual LucasArts games like Sam and Max, Maniac Mansion, and Day of the Tentacle
- Myst
- The various King's Quest games
- The various Space Quest games
- The various Leisure Suit Larry games
World of Warcraft
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Released: Nov '04
Estimated Sales: 1.4 Million
The hell? How can they use cite such a paltry number when WoW is at damn near 7 million active subscribers worldwide? 2 million in the State, alone!
FTA on Game of Life by Hasbro: (#38 on the list)
As far as introducing new players to the basics of video game using mechanics they already know it's respectable, but otherwise it's just another example of unintimidating banality equaling huge gains.
I have to disagree with this comment. My girlfriend and I happened across this game somehow and we play it all the time. You can play with the same rules as the board game or you can play an "enhanced" version with minigames instead of Life tiles. Every square shows either a still comic with one of many corny but funny captions, or an amusing simplistic 3D animation. Aside from the frills it's well programmed and bug free so there's nothing to intimidate computer noobs.
If you can find this rare gem it will cost no more than $5. Even if this game doesn't interest you, consider it an investment. It really is fun for all ages.
And for the record, this advice is coming from a FPS and Civilization gamer.
Railroad Tycoon is an economy sim, not a train simulator. A train simulator is like a flight simulator, just with trains. I.e. you are the driver and can take the train along real routes. You don't worry about building routes or making a profit, you drive the train. Sounds boring and I suppose it really is but since the Microsoft Train Simulator is GAINING shelf space instead of losing it there has to be some pretty large demographic that enjoys it. Probably overlapping with the demographic for model trains.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.