The PC doesn’t get the appreciation that it should. It’s what consoles are trying to be, and failing miserably at the attempt. If you enjoy gaming you aren’t really getting the full effect unless you’re playing on the best console there is, your PC.
ArenaNet’s Guild Wars comes in at number eight with 6.5 million copies sold. It was originally released in 2005 and racked up the sales over the years, it helps that it’s a good game, and was very well received by both critics and fans.
Valve’s original Half-Life was initially released in 1998 and has been relevant since then, the sequel more so but we’ll get to that later. Half-Life helped bring the FPS genre into the 21st century, before this game you had Doom but now you had something different, something new. But after 9.3 million copies are purchased it’s going to affect the next generation of FPSs whether it wants to or not.
The Sims 3, from Maxis, came out in 2009. Since its release it’s sold 10 million copies, it helps that it already had a rabid fan-base that would buy almost anything with The Sims written on it. The series is fantastically popular, partially because it is a far superior single-player version of Second Life, it’s so much more fun without all of those other people to ruin everything.
When you think of the RTS genre, which series do you consider the poster child for the genre? Most people would say Blizzard’s 1998 classic StarCraft. Part of the reason it’s received such appreciation is because almost every PC gamer has a copy of it, it sold 11 million copies, which means that even if you don’t like real-time strategy games you probably own a copy.
2004 saw the much anticipated release of the sequel to Half-Life with Half-Life 2. The sequel the proceeded to sell more copies than you could shake a stick at with 12 million copies. The game is still selling, as long as they don’t make a sequel this won’t stop being a must have game to own and play.
Blizzard shows up again on the list with the hack and slash classic Diablo III. This is one of the newer entries to the list as it was originally released in 2012, and since then it’s racked up 12 million copies sold. The fact that it’s outsold its predecessor says quite a bit because Diablo II was one of the most popular games of its time.
Blizzard takes the number two spot as well with their beloved MMO World of Warcraft. The game has quite a few subscribers and each and every one of those subscribers had to initially purchase the game. The game has been going strong since its release in 2004, having sold 14 million copies. So if anyone is looking for a WoW killer you may want to stop looking because there isn’t anyone else around with this much sway.
The number one spot goes to Microsoft’s newest acquisition, Minecraft. It says quite a bit when a game goes for $2 billion dollars, that’s more than most would pay for anything … ever. Since it emerged into this world in 2009 it has sold 16 million copies on the PC, that’s two million more than the next game on the list, making it head and shoulders above the competition.
