Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Top 100 Best-Selling PC Games of the Century

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the can't-believe-millionaire-beats-out-hl2 dept.

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."

6 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. "Century"? by DesireCampbell · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is like announcing the best games of the year in January.

    --
    Whoo, signature!
    DesireCampbell.com
  2. Gosh by masklinn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Print link because, seriously, 10 words/page just so they can display more ads is annoying

    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
  3. Variety... by ChowRiit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There tend to be a lot MORE PC games than console games released, so the market is more spread. The report is also only since 2000, which means that games from '05 and '06 have had far less time to sell budget copies and the like, than big games released 5 or 6 years ago.

    Also, some people have terrible taste...

    1. Re:Variety... by masklinn · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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
  4. US only, stores only by LarsWestergren · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  5. Why only six years? PC gaming is not much older. by Were-Rabbit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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:

    - 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

    ...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?