Ranked by copies sold, from Tetris and Minecraft down to a Call of Duty from 2012. Every figure is sourced, every game gets a short history of why it sold, and the whole list can be filtered by publisher, decade or platform.
Showing 51 games, 3.07 billion copies
520million
Tetris is the only game on this list whose figure is the sum of dozens of separate releases across almost forty years of hardware, from the Game Boy to phones. That is exactly why some sources refuse to call it the best-seller and hand the title to Minecraft instead; Wikipedia lists both at number one.
400million
Minecraft began as a one-person project sold from a website and became the best-selling single game ever made. Its advantage is that it never stopped: a decade of free updates, an Education Edition in schools and a console-to-phone spread kept it selling long after most games fall silent.
230million
Grand Theft Auto V shipped on three console generations and PC, and GTA Online gave people a reason to buy it again each time. No paid game has sold more copies without being counted across separate releases, and it is still charting in its second decade.
85million
Red Dead Redemption 2 moved into third place in 2026 after its strongest year since launch, helped by new platforms and steady discounts. A slow, deliberate western outselling every Call of Duty is one of the quieter surprises on this list.
82.9million
Wii Sports is the best-selling game ever released for a single console, and it was packed in with the Wii everywhere except Japan. Nintendo counts those bundles, so this figure says as much about Wii hardware sales as about the game, though the game did a lot to sell the hardware.
79.54million
Mario Kart 8 sold modestly on the Wii U; the Switch re-release of the same game sold more than 70 million. Wikipedia combines re-releases with the original, which is why a 2014 kart racer sits in the top five.
75million
PUBG sold its 75 million copies before it went free-to-play in 2022, which is the only reason it can appear here at all. It popularised the battle royale format that Fortnite and Warzone later made bigger, and remains the best-selling paid shooter not named Call of Duty.
70million
Terraria passed Super Mario Bros. in 2024 and reached 70 million in 2026, fifteen years after a tiny team released it. A low price, enormous free updates and a port to nearly everything with a screen did the work.
65million
The Witcher 3 is the best-selling single-player role-playing game ever released. The Switch port, a free next-generation update and the Netflix series each gave it a fresh wave of buyers.
58million
Super Mario Bros. held the best-seller record for most of the 1990s, and like Wii Sports it was bundled with its console. It is the oldest game in the top ten by more than twenty years.
55million
Human: Fall Flat is the least famous game in the top ten and a reminder that sales and cultural footprint are different things. A wobbly physics puzzler made by a very small studio, it sold on cheap bundles, mobile ports and years of YouTube and streaming clips.
50million
The Sims is the only entry from the year 2000 and the best-selling PC game of its era. Its figure combines the original with its console versions and expansion-free re-releases; the sequels, which sold even more, are counted separately.
50million
Stardew Valley was written, drawn and scored by one person, Eric Barone, and reached 50 million copies in its tenth year. It has never raised its price and still receives free content updates, which is a large part of why it keeps selling.
50million
Overwatch sold 50 million copies as a paid game before Overwatch 2 replaced it with a free-to-play sequel in 2022. Like PUBG, its place here is frozen at the moment it stopped charging.
49.91million
Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched in March 2020, the week much of the world went into lockdown, and became one of the fastest-selling games Nintendo has ever released. It is the highest-ranked game on the list that has only ever been sold on one console.
47.44million
The first Pokémon games sold more than 31 million copies as Red and Blue, another 14 million as Yellow, and a little more on the 3DS Virtual Console. They are the oldest handheld games on the list and the start of the best-selling media franchise in the world.
43.8million
Wii Fit came with a balance board and sold to households that had never bought a game. Split roughly evenly between the original and Wii Fit Plus, it outsold every Zelda and every Call of Duty.
43million
Black Ops III is the best-selling Call of Duty, a title it earned by arriving at the peak of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One generation while also shipping on the older consoles. Its Zombies mode is widely credited with much of the long tail.
41million
The 2019 Modern Warfare reboot reset the series after a run of weaker years and introduced the free Warzone mode a few months later. Warzone players do not count here; the 41 million are paid copies of the campaign and multiplayer game.
40million
Sonic the Hedgehog was bundled with the Sega Genesis to compete with Nintendo's pack-in Mario, and the strategy worked. Its 40 million includes decades of re-releases on compilations, phones and newer consoles.
40million
Payday 2 reached 40 million largely through free giveaways and deep discounts on Steam and the Epic Games Store over more than a decade. It is the best-selling co-operative heist game and one of the clearest examples of a long tail beating a big launch.
40million
Hogwarts Legacy was widely reported as the best-selling game of 2023 and reached 40 million by the end of 2025. It is the fastest climber in the top 20 and the only licensed film property in the top 50.
37.76million
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the best-selling fighting game ever made, by a wide margin. Its roster of more than 80 characters drawn from across the industry made it a buying-event in a way few sequels manage.
37.38million
Mario Kart Wii shipped with a plastic steering wheel and sold to the same casual audience that bought Wii Sports and Wii Fit. It was the best-selling Mario Kart until the Switch version overtook it.
35.54million
Breath of the Wild launched alongside the Switch and sold nearly 34 million copies on it, plus 1.7 million on the Wii U it was originally built for. It is the best-selling Zelda by a wide margin over its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom.
35million
Cyberpunk 2077 had one of the most troubled launches in recent memory and was briefly pulled from the PlayStation Store. Patches, the Phantom Liberty expansion and the Edgerunners anime turned it around; by late 2025 it had outpaced The Witcher 3's first five years.
33.14million
Wii Sports Resort introduced the more precise Wii MotionPlus attachment and was bundled with later Wii consoles. It is the third Wii-series title in the top 30, a run no other casual franchise has matched.
30.8million
New Super Mario Bros. brought side-scrolling Mario back after fourteen years and became the best-selling game on the Nintendo DS. Its figure is for the DS game alone.
30.5million
Super Mario Odyssey is the best-selling 3D Mario game and one of five Switch exclusives in the top 50. It arrived eight months after the console and has stayed on Nintendo's own top-sellers chart every year since.
30.32million
New Super Mario Bros. Wii added four-player co-operative play to the side-scrolling formula and sold to the Wii's unusually broad audience. The Wii has six games in the top 40; no other single console has more than four.
30.12million
The second generation of Pokémon sold nearly 24 million as Gold and Silver and another 6 million as Crystal. It was the best-selling game on the Game Boy Color and held the series' sales record for twenty years.
30million
Skyrim's 30 million is a 2016 figure, and Bethesda has since claimed more than 60 million. Wikipedia keeps the lower number because the higher one came from a director known for promotional exaggeration, so the game is almost certainly underranked here.
30million
Borderlands 2 is the best-selling loot shooter and the best-selling game 2K has published outside sports. Its figure includes the Handsome Collection and later re-releases, which Wikipedia treats as the same product.
30million
Monster Hunter: World took a series that had been mostly Japanese and handheld and made it a global console hit. It passed 30 million in 2026 and remains Capcom's best-selling game, ahead of its newer sequel Wilds.
30million
Black Ops Cold War launched across both the outgoing and incoming console generations in November 2020. Its reported development budget, around 700 million dollars, is the largest publicly known for any game on this list.
30million
It Takes Two can only be played with a second person, and one purchase lets a friend join for free. That it still sold 30 million paid copies makes it the best-selling co-op-only game ever made and the bulk of Hazelight's 50 million lifetime sales.
30million
Elden Ring is the best-selling game FromSoftware has made and the first of its famously difficult action role-playing games to reach a mass audience. It passed 30 million in 2025, including the Shadow of the Erdtree edition that bundles the base game.
28.3million
Duck Hunt is the oldest game in the top 50 and sold almost entirely as a pack-in with Super Mario Bros. and the NES Zapper light gun. Nearly every copy is attached to a console sale from the mid-1980s.
28.28million
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet had the biggest launch in Nintendo history, with 10 million copies in three days, despite widely reported technical problems. They are the best-selling Pokémon games since the originals.
28.02million
Wii Play was a collection of nine small games sold with a second Wii Remote, and most people bought it for the controller. It is the fourth Wii-series title on this list and the purest example of a bundle driving a sales figure.
28million
Black Myth: Wukong is the newest game in the top 50 and the first Chinese-developed single-player game to sell at this scale. It sold 10 million copies in its first three days, almost all of them in China, and 28 million within a year.
27.5million
San Andreas was the best-selling PlayStation 2 game and the best-selling Grand Theft Auto until GTA IV passed it in 2011. Its figure includes the later mobile and Definitive Edition re-releases.
27.16million
Sword and Shield were the first main Pokémon games on a home console and the best-selling pair in the series since Gold and Silver. Six Pokémon entries make the top 50, tied with Call of Duty for the most of any series.
26.5million
The 2011 Modern Warfare 3 set a launch record of 775 million dollars in five days that stood for years. It closed out the original Modern Warfare trilogy and is one of six Call of Duty games in the top 50.
26.2million
The first Black Ops was the best-selling game in the United States for 2010 and launched the Zombies mode as a headline feature. The Black Ops sub-series accounts for four of Call of Duty's six entries here.
25.62million
Sun and Moon sold 16 million copies and the Ultra re-releases added 9 million more. They were the best-selling games on the Nintendo 3DS and the last main Pokémon games on a handheld-only system.
25.56million
Garry's Mod is the best-selling PC-exclusive game ever and the only PC-only title in the top 50. It started as a free modification of Half-Life 2 and has sold steadily for twenty years with no sequel and no port.
25.5million
Diamond and Pearl sold 17.6 million and Platinum another 7.9 million on the Nintendo DS. Their 2021 remakes, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, are counted as separate games and do not appear here.
25million
Grand Theft Auto IV earned 500 million dollars in its first week, a record at the time for any entertainment release. It is the third Rockstar game in the top 50, giving the studio more copies sold in total than any publisher on the list except Nintendo and Mojang.
25million
Phasmophobia is the only game in the top 50 still in early access, six years after it appeared on Steam. A four-player ghost-hunting game that started as a solo project, it reached 25 million in 2025 after console versions arrived.
24.2million
Black Ops II rounds out the list and was the best-selling game of 2012 in the United States. It introduced branching campaign endings to the series and is the fourth Black Ops title in the top 50.
No games match those filters.
Drag the slider to see which of the 50 came out in each year. Circle size is copies sold; colour is publisher.
Bundles built the early list. Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Sonic the Hedgehog, Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Sports Resort all shipped in the box with a console. Wikipedia counts those copies, which is fair, since the games were a large part of why the consoles sold, but it means the oldest entries measure hardware as much as software.
The long tail beats the big launch. Minecraft, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Garry's Mod, Payday 2 and Human: Fall Flat all sold most of their copies years after release, through free updates, ports and discounts. None of them had a launch anywhere near a Call of Duty's, and all of them are now above most Call of Duty games.
Free-to-play games are invisible here. Fortnite, Roblox, League of Legends and Genshin Impact have more players than almost anything on this page but are not sold as copies, so they do not appear. PUBG and Overwatch are the border cases: both charged money long enough to make the list, then stopped.
Nintendo is the only company that shows up in every decade. Duck Hunt in the 1980s, Pokémon in the 1990s, the Wii line in the 2000s, the Switch exclusives in the 2010s and 2020s. Every other publisher's entries cluster in one or two generations.
A best-selling video game, for this list, is one with the most paid copies sold or shipped worldwide, as reported by its publisher or by a reliable press source. The figures and rankings follow Wikipedia's list of best-selling video games, which applies these rules:
Two caveats are worth repeating. Tetris's figure combines decades of separate releases and some sources reject it, which is why Minecraft shares first place. Skyrim is listed at a 2016 figure of 30 million because the later claim of 60 million has not been independently confirmed. Sales figures are published irregularly, so a game can sit at an old number for years and then jump.
It depends on how you count. Tetris has sold about 520 million copies if every version since 1988 is added together, which is why Britannica, Forbes, IGN and GameSpot call it the best-seller. Minecraft has sold 400 million copies as a single game, which is why the BBC, Guinness World Records and others give it the title. Wikipedia lists both at number one; this page does the same.
Grand Theft Auto V has sold 230 million copies as of Take-Two's May 2026 investor presentation. It is the best-selling game of the last fifteen years and the third entry on this list after Tetris and Minecraft.
Nintendo. 20 of the 51 entries were published by Nintendo (or Nintendo with The Pokémon Company), adding up to about 0.79 billion copies. Activision is next with six Call of Duty games, then Rockstar Games with three Grand Theft Auto titles and Red Dead Redemption 2.
Because Tetris and Minecraft share first place, and ties lower down share a rank too (standard competition ranking). Three games are tied at 11th, three at 19th, six at 31st and two at 48th, so the list runs to 51 rows while the last rank is 50.
No. The list only counts paid copies sold or shipped. That is why Fortnite, League of Legends, Roblox and Genshin Impact are missing, and why PUBG and Overwatch appear with the number they reached before they became free to play. Snake, which came pre-installed on 400 million Nokia phones, is left out for the same reason.
Bethesda has said Skyrim has sold more than 60 million copies, but that claim came from a director with a record of promotional exaggeration, so Wikipedia keeps the last independently reported figure of 30 million from 2016. Skyrim is probably the most under-ranked game on the list.
Wii Sports, with 82.9 million copies on the Wii. It was bundled with the console outside Japan, and Nintendo includes those bundled copies in the total. Among games sold on their own, Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch leads at 49.9 million.
The figures come from Wikipedia's list of best-selling video games, checked on 3 November 2026. Publishers report sales at irregular intervals, usually in earnings reports or anniversary announcements, so individual entries move a few times a year.
Rankings and figures: List of best-selling video games, Wikipedia, checked 3 November 2026. Wikipedia in turn cites publisher reports and press coverage for each entry, including:
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