The 25th anniversary of the PS2's launch in North America has just come and gone, and not without a delightful new bit of historical trivia: a definitive list of the console's top 20 best-selling games in the US. Perhaps the biggest difference between the sales charts of that era and today is the fact that there's no Call of Duty to break up the dominant reigns of GTA and Madden, but there's a little nugget for Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy fans, too.
"The PS2 sold over 46.5M units in the US, with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas its best-selling game in both units and dollars," Mat Piscatella of game industry analysis group Circana says in a Bluesky post. "Over 147M accessory units sold for PS2, with the PS2 8 Meg Memory Card moving 28.3M units with a 61% attach rate."
No, that doesn't mean 39% of PS2 players weren't saving their games – the platform had numerous other memory cards for sale, with both official and third-party forms. Most interesting, though, is the chart that Piscatella attached to post, breaking down the top 20 best-selling PS2 games in the US by both unit and dollar sales.
Happy 25th, PS2! The PS2 sold over 46.5M units in the US, with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas its best-selling game in both units and dollars. Over 147M accessory units sold for PS2, with the PS2 8 Meg Memory Card moving 28.3M units with a 61% attach rate. Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service
— @matpiscatella.bsky.social (@matpiscatella.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-28T15:49:53.260Z
It should be no surprise to see the entire 3D GTA trilogy – GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas – topping the charts, as this is the era where Rockstar's open-world crime series established itself as an absolute monolith. One other Rockstar game also made the list with Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition – which yes, means no Bully on the list.
Perhaps the most notable item here, though, is the number nine spot: Kingdom Hearts. The Disney-led Square title is the top RPG on the list, ahead of Final Fantasy 10, way down in the 17th spot. Does that mean that Kingdom Hearts is the superior RPG? Or was Mickey Mouse just more marketable to Americans than Tidus?
Much of the list is made up of the popular stuff you'd expect, with numerous Madden and racing titles in the mix, but maybe the clearest indicator of the era is on the dollar sales chart, where titles like Guitar Hero and Rock Band rank much higher. Packaging your game with hundreds of dollars worth of peripherals will boost its revenue if not its unit sales, I guess. Just be glad that Call of Duty hadn't yet come around to completely destroy the rankings.
Never mind the sales rankings, these are the best PS2 games of all time.
