Mat Piscatela / Circana: Top Selling Games on Playstation Consoles of All Time (US)

Surprising a Guitar Hero game made it. Nicely ranked at #10 in $$$ and no Unit rank, so sales must had been fronted loaded at high prices.

I had to to check this game to see if it was bundled with a guitar and it was. The bundle had a price of $90 on PS2/Wii and $100 on 360/PS3. So that would skew up the $$$.
 
This kind of shows why the whole doom and gloom about exclusives is overblown.
To the average Playstation user it's primarily a device to play third party games. It's only on gaming forums with a lot of people that have gaming PCs that the vlue proposition of a Ps5 is entirely derived from exclusives.
 
This kind of shows why the whole doom and gloom about exclusives is overblown.
To the average Playstation user it's primarily a device to play third party games. It's only on gaming forums with a lot of people that have gaming PCs that the vlue proposition of a Ps5 is entirely derived from exclusives.
So true.

It's too bad there's no European chart because that one would be flooded with FIFA and racing games. And the charts are for paid games so it doesn't include heavy hitter F2P games like Fortnite, Apex, Roblox etc....

Just find any kind of top played PS charts and it's all third party. GT7 is lucky to even break into top 20 played.
 
A bit surprised not to see Hogwarts Legacy in the top 20, especially since it was the top selling game in the US in 2023 according to Circana.

circana-2023-sales-chart.jpg


Probably released too recently to be on the list and Hogwarts did BIIIG on the Switch. I think Dring said the Switch version had nearly caught up to the PS5 version in the UK. Hogwarts did much than any Call of Duty on Steam as well.
 
This kind of shows why the whole doom and gloom about exclusives is overblown.
To the average Playstation user it's primarily a device to play third party games. It's only on gaming forums with a lot of people that have gaming PCs that the vlue proposition of a Ps5 is entirely derived from exclusives.

That was a much different era. PS+ revenue is at this point more critical than even "Full Game" sales.

Without exclusives, Sony is going to get steamrolled by consoles with Free MP.
 
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Black Ops 6 is in fifth place and has been on the market for less than a year, meanwhile and after 5 remasters TLoU hasn't entered the sales chart in dollars 😂
 
I used to love Call of Duty but that chart is just sad.
Also, seeing Vice City in there made me chuckle. Puts into perspective how much bank Rockstar have been making since the early 2000, like, it's probably not far fetched to assume most people who got a PS2 also bought Vice City and San Andreas, insane.
Really curious to see how many records VI will break in its first day and week.
 
There must be something wrong with the link above about 2022 MLB 22 outselling GT7.

There is no way a baseball game outsold GT. The link says Xbox and Switch digital sales are excluded. That's fine, only disc sales of multiplats are included too. But theres no way it can be that big. Most sales are digital to begin with and MLB was on GP. So any Xbox/Switch disc sales cant be big. Added up, I dont see how it can still beat GT7 sales.
 
Call of duty station
extremely depressing list, but i guess this list would be almost the same on pc or xbox, cod cod cod , minecraft, cod.
Yeah, the list is going to look essentially the same on every platform besides Nintendo unfortunately.

It also shows how important Playstation is to the COD franchise.
Well, with context yes. If PlayStation wasn't consistently selling 80+ million consoles and was consistently only selling 10-20 million a generation then despite COD being the top selling game on the platform I would say it's not important to the franchise.

COD is important to PlayStation because it sells well, and PlayStation is important to COD because it sells well.

Edit: Removed a response to another post as I misread the thread so it didn't really make sense anymore.
 
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Very interesting to read those numbers. For decades, Nintendo detractors accused Nintendo systems of being restricted to a select few franchises, pointing to the dominance of top-selling titles in the charts. They argued that other games were eclipsed, that third parties couldn't compete, and that niche franchises had no space to grow. Yet here we see a complete domination of a handful of franchises in the PlayStation ecosystem as well. So, does that same logic apply here too? :pie_thinking:
 
Very interesting to read those numbers. For decades, Nintendo detractors accused Nintendo systems of being restricted to a select few franchises, pointing to the dominance of top-selling titles in the charts. They argued that other games were eclipsed, that third parties couldn't compete, and that niche franchises had no space to grow. Yet here we see a complete domination of a handful of franchises in the PlayStation ecosystem as well. So, does that same logic apply here too? :pie_thinking:

Well.....obviously third parties can compete on PlayStation since that's what dominates the charts. In that way, it is the direct inverse of that Nintendo "logic".
 
Well.....obviously third parties can compete on PlayStation since that's what dominates the charts. In that way, it is the direct inverse of that Nintendo "logic".
This is another discussion, but I mean - an obvious irony - is that GTA, COD and Spider-Man domination would automatically make everything else irrelevant? Because this was the warped logic used against Nintendo.
 
People think their first party games are what makes people buy their hardware...it's not. It never was.
What do you mean by "people"?
We're not all the same. I definitely bought PS5 for Sony's games. And Xbox Series X for Microsoft's games and Gamepass.

In hindsight it would've been better to just invest in a living room PC right away.but in 2020 I had no idea that everything would come to PC.
 
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Surprising a Guitar Hero game made it. Nicely ranked at #10 in $$$ and no Unit rank, so sales must had been fronted loaded at high prices.

I had to to check this game to see if it was bundled with a guitar and it was. The bundle had a price of $90 on PS2/Wii and $100 on 360/PS3. So that would skew up the $$$.

GH3 was the height of its popularity and I remember there being a lot of DLC songs released after. Not sure if those count but I wouldn't be surprised.
 
This kind of shows why the whole doom and gloom about exclusives is overblown.
To the average Playstation user it's primarily a device to play third party games. It's only on gaming forums with a lot of people that have gaming PCs that the vlue proposition of a Ps5 is entirely derived from exclusives.
Take away exclusives and switch2 stops selling, bro, look how quickly xbox consoles stopped selling with 0 exclusives.
 
The chart explains why gaming's doomed - games cost a fortune to make and mediocre games bring in more money than great games.
The only hope for the future is cheaper development targets that facilitate the formation of new studios.
 
Ok, so I'm retarded. This is nothing new, "it is known" as the saying goes.

But my initial reaction to the chart was "What the hell kind of units are "Grand Theft Auto V" or "Minecraft"? Shouldn't it be "copies sold" or something?"
 
I find it nuts MLB 22 outsold GT7. I checked the link too and MLB doesnt include Xbox or Switch multiplat sales. So it outsold GT7 straight up.
It's because MLB's sales are more US concentrated than GT.
No way Guitar Hero 3 outdid Spiderman in dollar sales.
As of March 2011, GH3 had made $830.9 million in retail sales alone, more retail sales than any other game at that point. It was a huge title.
 
There must be something wrong with the link above about 2022 MLB 22 outselling GT7.

There is no way a baseball game outsold GT. The link says Xbox and Switch digital sales are excluded. That's fine, only disc sales of multiplats are included too. But theres no way it can be that big. Most sales are digital to begin with and MLB was on GP. So any Xbox/Switch disc sales cant be big. Added up, I dont see how it can still beat GT7 sales.

It's probably correct.

Maybe you're not looking it as the year of 2022 for context. Also MLB was 9th best selling game the year before, 14th and 14th again in 2023/24. So yes MLB sales are big.

The bulk of GT sales are from Europe from about GT4 onwards. I can totally see how MLB in 2022 sold more than GT7 in the US seeing sales breakdowns of GT4 and GT5. Perhaps GT7 had longer legs in the US. GT Sport and GT7 took a while to get updated and gain the sales as they release in bare bones forms with MTX controversies and come good later on. So yeah GT7 first year in the US can be weaker that you'd expect.
 
A bit surprised not to see Hogwarts Legacy in the top 20, especially since it was the top selling game in the US in 2023 according to Circana.

circana-2023-sales-chart.jpg


That charted higher than CoD MW3 only because it sold a fair amount on switch with its late 2023 release. COD MW3 is 17th, there was no way Hogwarts was charting on the Playstation best selling of all time chart taking that into account.
 
COD devs aren't pussies, so they make all of the money.

So nice of the industry to abandon the dudebro market, I'm sure Activision is grateful.
 
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Take away exclusives and switch2 stops selling, bro, look how quickly xbox consoles stopped selling with 0 exclusives.

I'm talking specifically about the Ps5, not every console.
Switch, unlike PS5, is actually an exclusive driven platform so of course exclusives are important to it. The average Switch owner gets one primarily to play Nintendo games on it, which is reflected by the Switch software sales charts being completely dominated by Nintendo games. The average Ps5 owners gets one to play COD, sports games, GTA, etc, with exclusives being more of a nice occasional bonus.

Playstation was more exclusive dependent when Xbox was an actual threat, specially during the Xbox360/Ps3 era. But MS fucking up the last 2 console gens has basically allowed Playstation to become the default "high fidelity" home console.


That was a much different era. PS+ revenue is at this point more critical than even "Full Game" sales.
Without exclusives, Sony is going to get steamrolled by consoles with Free MP.

And where are these consoles with free MP going to come from?
If it's just a pre built PC from Xbox it's going to be exponentially more expensive than a console, because they can't subsidize the hardware with a walled garden.
 
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Extremely depressing list.

COD devs aren't pussies, so they make all of the money.

So nice of the industry to abandon the dudebro market, I'm sure Activision is grateful.

Yes, COD's dev staff are individually getting all the money from those COD sales, and not ABK & Microsoft executives, CEOs, or the company's bank account pocketing the vast majority of that money.
 
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This kind of shows why the whole doom and gloom about exclusives is overblown.
To the average Playstation user it's primarily a device to play third party games. It's only on gaming forums with a lot of people that have gaming PCs that the vlue proposition of a Ps5 is entirely derived from exclusives.
That and console wars. Probably a lot of those users don't even game on PS consoles but just go along with the "PS has no real exclusives" to defend their favorite plastic box.
 
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