Skyrim and Minecraft are the only two I’ve played, and the total playtime for the two of them is pretty brief at that. I think you’ll find stiff competition around here for the title of “worst gamer” by these standards! :)
Wow. A full 25% of that list is comprised of a now-basically-defunct genre.
(But it lives on in VR!)
There’s a VR Wii simulator???
I kid, I kid. I avoided the plastic instruments craze very successfully despite being in college for most of it. My abysmal coordination, timing, and tone sense made me an automatic failure in every expression of the genre imaginable. Alas.
Ugh that list is incredibly depressing for a few reasons. (1) It’s mostly versions of one increasingly bad game. (2) There is markedly less diversity versus the previous decade. (3) People apparently have terrible taste (at least in aggregate).
Diego
Call of Duty is not an increasingly bad game. Far from it. Like any long running series, it’s had ups and downs, but it’s generally a technical showcase that has tried and true shooting gameplay with new twists that works perfectly on a variety of machines.
Tomato. Tomahto.
You play it yearly?
It does make me wish we had access to more than the Top 20 though. It doesn’t feel like a Top 20 list when there’s 11 Call of Duty games and 3 Battlefield/Battlefront games. That only leaves room for 6 other games!
I suspect with mobile sales, including IAPs, that list would be drastically different. It’s just an indication of the difference between enthusiasts (like the denizens of this forum and most of the gaming press) and regular gamers, like the people who play the next Madden and CoD every year. Thanks for posting @Telefrog! It’s always nice to get some perspective.
Also useful to realize that not making the top 20 does not make a game a failure. The Witcher 3 has shipped 20 million copies. That list just shows the economic strength of the industry.
Not sure what to think of this top 20 for 2019 sales. Anthem is Number 15. Does that mean it did well? Or does it mean that potentially only the top 10 or so games did really well in 2019 and then there was a sharp drop off, or something like that?
I honestly didn’t realize that Kingdom Hearts 3 sold well. Or Borderlands 3. Or Days Gone, if being number 19 for the year means it sold well (which it might not).
Anthem did do very well in initial sales. I think there was even some breathless PR about it being the biggest launch title for BioWare or something.
Keep in mind though that having a lot of initial client sales (while good news) is not the measure of success for “games as a service” project. Especially for investors. It’s all about “user engagement” and monthly pull. IE how much are you making on a recurring basis?
Kingdom Hearts, as much as I do not like those games, is a massive franchise. It’s Disney and Final Fantasy. Of course it’s a top seller.
Borderlands 3 is the sequel to a massive series of games. Again, of course it’s up there. Days Gone did very well and got the push of being a Sony exclusive brand new franchise game with a long lead up to release.
Yep which is a problem of their own making. Anthem would be a run away hit if they just, you know, sold the game and considered it good. But nope, can’t sell games anymore, gotta have schemes.
Wonder what the top 20 would look like without Call of Duty.
An odd note, I know, but it occurred to me that even the one racing game in the list has (potentially IRL) lethal combat in it.