| Alexander Schöpf
|
05.03.2023
Games with freely accessible worlds land in the first two places.
Video games have long outgrown children’s rooms and have arrived in mainstream society. Gaming is booming and has now developed into a gigantic business. This is also evidenced by the numbers of the best-selling video games, such as one current ranking by Statista shows.
Dice beat weapons
The German statistics platform has determined the best-selling games in the world to date (as of February 2023). The game “Minecraft”, which was originally developed by Swedish programmer Markus “Notch” Persson and his company Mojang, took first place with 238 million sales. Mojang is now owned by Microsoft.
Second place went to Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto V” (GTA 5) with 175 million units sold. With a production cost of 265 million dollars, the gangster saga is also one of the most expensive games of all time. Of course, GTA 5 was still a financial success. The game grossed $800 million on day one, setting a new record. The billion-dollar barrier was then broken on the third day, something no other video game — or film — had done before. With over $6 billion in revenue, GTA 5 is the top-grossing audiovisual entertainment product. The puzzle-like video game Tetris follows in third place. The computer game, which originally came from the Russian developer Alexei Paschitnow, has sold around 143 million units worldwide to date (combined sales of the EA and Nintendo versions).
The Top 10
- Minecraft – 238 million units sold
- Grand Theft Auto V – 175 million
- Tetris – 143 million
- Wii Sports – 83 million
- PUBG – 75 million
- Mario Kart 8 – 60.5 million
- Super Mario Bros. – 58 million
- Overwatch – 50 million
Red Dead Redemption 2 – 50 million - Pokemon – 47.5 million
- Terrari – 44.5 million
