For the average or avid gamer out there, the number of copies sold worldwide by your favorite game doesn’t come to mind or bother you. However, for the developers or studio heads, who invest thousands of hours into the production of these games, those numbers are everything. And as much as they would like to deny it, those numbers are even more important than whether players find their games to be fun or not *coughs* EA Sports *coughs*.
Gaming Sales also play a huge role in determining if a game gets a sequel or more sequels, or if a small game development studio gets to stay afloat, retain its best staff, or eventually gets taken over by a bigger and richer studio. For example, a gaming studio, like Santa Monica will continue to remain relevant to Sony Entertainment thanks to the financial success of a game like God of War, just like vulkanvegas.com would in the online casino niche, while a studio, like Codemasters, would need the financial support of EA Sports to expand its horizon and ventures into other ideas.
Successful game development studios have used their staggering numbers, in terms of sales, when it came to negotiating with prospective buyers or investors just ask the former owners of Bethesda Studios who sold their company to Xbox for upwards of 5 billion dollars. We could spend an entire fortnight discussing the business aspect of the gaming industry, but our focus is on the successful games and not the money rollers.
Tetris (EA)
The game Tetris might sound or look strange to people born in this millennium, however, to those old enough to remember the struggle of playing video games on heavy, ugly-looking computers Tetris remains a favorite. Created by the software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984, Tetris is a puzzle video game that comprises a playing field in which Tetrominoes (pieces of different geometric shapes) descend from the top of the field. Players can move laterally and rotate these Tetrominoes as they descend until they land on the bottom of the field or on a previously placed piece.
Tetris players have one objective, to use the Tetrominoes to create as many horizontal lines consisting of blocks as it is possible, with each line disappearing as soon as it is completed. As basic as the rule of the game might sound, Tetris had players hooked on it for hours. With each player trying to prove to the next that he’s the better and molding geometric forms to form straight lines.
The popularity of the game surged globally when it became available on Nintendo, Game Boy, and other handheld devices in the early 1990s. With a mobile phone version at the turn of the millennium, the number of sales increased exponentially, with over 130 million paid mobile downloads as of December 2011. Tetris also set a Guinness world record for the most ported video game thanks to its availability on over 65 platforms.
In December 2005, after the purchase of Jamdat, a mobile video game that had the mobile rights to the Tetris game Electronic Arts (EA) acquired a 15-year license on all Tetris game’s mobile phone releases. The American gaming company developed and published a new Tetris game for:
- iOS,
- Android,
- Blackberry OS,
- PlayStation Portable,
- PlayStation 3,
- Windows Phone.
As a result, the game gained 100 million downloads by 2010, making it the best-selling mobile game ever the third highest-selling video game of all time.
In April 2020, the license to create a new mobile version returned to The Tetris Company a company founded by Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers to manage the Tetris Licensing back in 1996– and a new version, which would include online compatibility as well as a battle royale mode, is reported to be in development.
Grand Theft Auto (GTA) V
I remember when the first time I played my first Grand Theft Auto game (GTA: Vice City), it was unlike anything I had ever played and I thought to myself, “wow, this is it”. That was unto I played the sequel, GTA: San Andreas, which happened to be larger than life at that point, with my friends and me talking about the game for hours every day; no wonder Rockstar studios released a remastered version of both games in 2021.
In 2013 Rockstar North developed and Rockstar Games published the GTA. Since that time GTA V has been the second best-selling video game ever and remains one of the most popular video games more than eight years after its initial series. The seventh main entry in the Grand Theft Auto Series follows the story of three protagonists street gangster Franklin Clinton, Drugs & guns runner Trevor Philips, and retired bank robber Michael De Santa who must all wriggle the intense pressure of a corrupt government agency and powerful criminals whilst trying to pull off money-spinning heists.
GTA V takes place in the fictional cities of San Andreas and Los Santos, with navigation through the city either by foot or by vehicles. The game is available in third-person or first-person perspective, with a lot of missions involving shooting and driving gameplay. GTA V was critically and financially acclaimed, winning a host of accolades including the game of the year award from several publications upon its release. In addition, it earned over $750 million on its first day of release and grossed $1 billion in the first three days of release.
GTA V was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in September 2013, and for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2014. The demand for the game might have dropped off in 2021; however, as recently as late 2020, the official sales site of the game crashed as the game went on discount sales due to high demand. New downloadable content for the game (GTA V Online: The Contract) was released at the end of last year, while PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of the game are slated for release in March this year. GTA V boasts a total sales of 155 million copies worldwide on all platforms, making it the second best-selling game of all time.
Minecraft
Initially not classified as a AAA game due to its creation by Markus Persson and development by Mojang Studios so it came as a shock to a lot of gamers and game development studios when it became a household name and commercial success following its release in November 2011. With over 230 million copies sold worldwide to date and nearly 140 million monthly active users, Minecraft is the best-selling video game ever.
Minecraft offers players a blocky, procedurally generated 3D world with infinite terrain to explore, craft tools and items, build structures and machines, discover, and explore raw materials together with the opportunity to choose how to play the game and no required goals to accomplish. The game also offers various games modes like fighting computer-controlled mob bosses, survival mode, as well as the opportunity to compete against or corporate with other players in the same world. I once saw a team of Minecraft players recreate the city of Los Angeles in the game without excluding any detail, which completely blew my mind.
Minecraft remains critically acclaimed by critics and is regarded as one of the best video games ever developed. Microsoft Mojang Studios and the entire Minecraft IP for $2.5 billion in 2014.
