Oct. 2, 2007
It's hard to take Wikipedia seriously. Anyone with functional hands can log on and edit nearly any entry of the sprawling database. Don't agree with their page about the history of Dr. Pepper? Log on and change it. If enough people complain, sure, it might get fixed, but in general everything's up for grabs.
With that in mind, we presentthis delicious page. It's the "List of best-selling video games." The page is locked, so it's not open for rampant editing. The page also lists all its sources. Seems like it's totally legit, huh? Curious to see what information such a list would hold, we waded through the numbers, stats and lists and came away dumbfounded. Most of the list sounds right, but listen to some of these doozies:
1. Nintendogs is the third best selling console game of all time. The series has sold more copies than Halo and Halo 2 combined.
2. For all its supposed popularity, God of War hasn't sold as many copies as Silent Hill 2. Granted, the latter has been out for a long time, but God of War had much stronger word of mouth and a larger web presence. This list also doesn't mention how God of War II has sold, though we'd assume it's performing quite well.
3. As a franchise, Driver has outsold Metroid. Typing that caused us physical pain. This data doesn't include Prime 3 though, so there's still hope.
4. Donkey Kong games have outsold all Sonic games. Poor guy's not even competition for DK, much less Mario.
5. There are only four million-selling PSP games - two of which are Monster Hunter.
6. Compare that number to the DS' 26 titles that have surpassed the million mark.
7. Nintendo publishes the top five console games of all time. The first non-Nintendo game on the list is GTA: Vice City at number six, and it's tied with Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire.
8. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl have only been out for one year in Japan, even less around the world, but have already sold more than Final Fantasy VII.
9. GameCube is generally thought of as the loser of the last generation, but it had many more million-selling games than the first Xbox.
10. Who finally won the heated battle between Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat? That would be Chun-Li and co, with an extra five million copies sold as a series.
11. The Crash Bandicoot games have performed extremely well. The franchise has outsold Tomb Raider, Mega Man and Resident Evil. Now that's truly scary.
12. James Bond is a franchise, didn't you know? And he's sold about 30 million games, more than Street Fighter, Tekken and Metal Gear. Roughly eight million of that number is from GoldenEye 007.
13. Animal Crossing: Wild World has outperformed Mario Kart DS, reaching 8 million copies worldwide.
14. The Ace Combat franchise has sold about as many copies as the Kingdom Hearts games. At first that seems like quite a feat, but that's only counting three KH games against Ace's ten.
15. The Sims, Lineage and Command & Conquer are the only PC titles in the top 20 franchises list. Further down are Diablo with 17 million sold and Half-Life with 16 million.
16. Would you believe that the first Harry Potter game for PC sold more than Quake II? We have a hard time buying this because it credits the game as "Philosopher's Stone" and cites US sales numbers. That game and movie were called "Sorcerer's Stone" in the US.
17. The Brain Age series, relatively new to the world, has already racked up more sales than all Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games (as individual franchises, not combined).
18. Mario has been around for decades and has sold roughly 193 million games around the world. Pokemon, despite coming around more than 10 years later, has almost caught up to Mario with 155 million games sold. Keep in mind that Diamond and Pearl are still flying off the shelves.
19. Nintendo says it has sold 2.4 billion video games. That's a shockingly high number, no doubt, but this list claims Sony sold more than a billion games on PS2 alone. Wonder if they're bundling original PlayStation games with that number?
20. A quick jaunt over tothis listreveals that the TurboGrafx-16 outsold Sega's Saturn. Damn. We knew the Saturn failed, but beaten by the TG-16? Sheesh.
That same list claims Sega's Game Gear outperformed the Dreamcast. This last bit of info has saddened us so much that we can't go on.
Again, keep in mind that this is Wikipedia. Even though the sources are listed, most of those sources are from the publisher's number-inflating mouths. If nothing else, the list is a fun way to kill some time. We certainly had our fair share of slack jaws and "wtf?" moments. Stunned along with us? Hit the forum to share your disbelief.
