RTL Today - Friday rankings: 5 best-selling video games of all times

The video game industry has truly blossomed over the last decades. This extreme popularity begs a pressing question: what are the best-selling games?

Our colleagues at RTL.lu trawled the internet and compiled a list of the five games that broke all records. Unsurprisingly, the top-five is highly polarised: on one hand, there are absolute classics that will probably fill video game enthusiasts with nostalgia and, on the other, there are some excitingly modern ones.

5: Super Mario Bros (1985)

Let's start with a real classic: not just any Mario but THE Mario. Super Mario Bros was originally sold as a package deal with the Nintendo NES console and was designed by Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto. More than 40.2 million copies have been sold and this number does not even include the sales of re-releases or remastered versions.

4: Wii Sports (2006)

Even classics such as Mario, Donkey Kong or Zelda did not stand a chance against Nintendo's best-selling game: Wii Sports. The latter is a collection of mini sports events and was, like Super Mario Bros, originally sold together with the Wii console. Around 83 million copies of the game have been sold.

3: Grand Theft Auto V (2013)

The secret of producing an instant modern classic? To unite a thrilling open-word experience with great online content. At least that is what Rockstar Games managed to do with their famous Grand Theft Auto V. The game found around 90 million happy owners and, mostly because of additional "mini-transactions" that consumers can buy online, became a real gold mine for the producers.

2: Minecraft (2011)

A gigantic pixel world with an equally gigantic success. Up until today, more than 144 million copies of Minecraft have been sold. The producer Mojang's marketing technique is surprisingly simple: make your game available on every platform. In fact, the company released PC, console and even smartphone versions of the game.

1: Tetris (1984)

THE old school classic par excellence takes the gold medal: Tetris has, is and probably will be much played all over the world. The concept is deceitfully simple but to master the game takes experience and skill. For a long time, the best-selling version has been the Gameboy edition. The game was released along with the console, which meant that almost every Gameboy buyer also purchased Tetris. The remade versions for later gameboys and other consoles sold around 70 million copies, which would already catapult the game into the top-three of the best-selling games. However, there is still more. Recent premium versions for smartphones and tablets further boosted the sales, resulting in a grand total of around half a billion sold copies.

A glimpse into the future...

The beta version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, PUBG in short, was released in March 2017. The official version followed in December. The game has already been sold 35 million times, which makes it the seventh most sold game of all times. We will see if it manages to climb a few spots...