The Mega Hits: The 34 10m+ Hits on Current Platforms Through 2011
by Jacob Mazel, posted on 06 January 2012 / 4,943 Views
In the PS2 era, five games topped 10m units for PS2, and two games topped 10m for GBA. Over the entirety of the 1990s, about the same number of games topped 10m. The figures don't change if you look for multi-platform hits either. Capcom's original Street Fighter II sold about 8m in the 1990s as a multi-platform game, Need for Speed and Madden routinely reached 6-9m units in the PS2 era (Madden still sells about the same amount as in the PS2 era most of the time), but nothing else was particularly close to reliably reaching 10m units or more.
The current era though, by the standards of this history, is simply enormous for 10m+ hits. There are 20 games that have topped 10m units on a single current platform to date (Wii, DS, or X360), and another 14 games that have not topped 10m on one platform but have across current systems. The overwhelming majority of these multiplatform games have sold on current systems, although a few like Guitar Hero III, sold several million PS2 too. Nonetheless, all the games below are 10m level hits on the current systems from late 2004 to the end of 2011. Figures are presented in millions, and are global totals.
The amazing part of this list is that it is clear that at least five more games should be added relatively soon, say by the end of 2012. Activision's next Call of Duty is pretty much assured to make the list. Just Dance 3 has sold 8.5m in three months, and will continue to sell obscenely well into at least early 2012 given it just sold 700,000+ units the week after Christmas. EA's Battlefield 3 is at 9.1m, and still selling rather well too (400k+ the week after Christmas) and could top 10m by the end of January 2012. Fifa 12, which is also over 9m, just sold 400,000+ the week after Christmas, and will clearly top 10m as well. In addition, Just Dance 2 is at 8.8m in the West, with the Nintendo-published version of the game, known as Just Dance Wii, at 420,000 in Japan for a grand total of 9.2m with figures still steadily growing.
Grand Theft Auto V, barring a delay or very late 2012 release, should also easily top 10m by the end of 2012. Red Dead Redemption, which is also over 9m, can't be ruled out for 10m by the end of 2012. Given the acceleration of Just Dance (6.5m in 27 months) to Just Dance 2 (9.2m in 15 months) to Just Dance 3 (8.5m in three months) it is conceivable that Just Dance 4 will top 10m by the end of 2012.
The point of all of this is, by the end of 2012, over 40 games will have topped 10m units on current platforms. Those figures are incredible - any game that sells that well gets huge royalty breaks that result in well over $100 million in profit. Nintendo and Microsoft (Sony doesn't have any) games over 10m are even more profitable, as there is no royalty - these games bring in at least $200 million in profit. Games at the very top of the list, such as Mario Kart, have likely brought in over a billion in profit, as even after the original Mario Kart + Wii bundle from mid-2011, not all Wiis were bundled with the game - which means Nintendo has sold something like 27-28m non-bundled copies of Mario Kart at almost $40 / profit per unit. Activision is seeing similarly enormous profit numbers with the recent Call of Duty games - as the fewer total unit sales compared to Mario Kart are offset by map pack purchases, and higher returns per unit out of the $60, at least until retailers discount the older Call of Duty for the latest Call of Duty.
It is also important to recognize that the games over 10m units this generation have sold over 663m units to date. That figure is larger than the lifetime figures for the NES, Genesis, SNES, GB, GBA, PSP, PS3, and X360 software markets to date. With GTA 5, COD Next, Just Dance 2-4, and a few others added, 10m+ hits will eventually account for at least 725m units of software this generation and possibly much more if there is a COD 2013, COD 2014, etc that performs well.
If you assume 4b units of software for the current machines (Wii, PS3, X360, DS, PSP) - the top 40 or so games will account for as much as 20% of all software sold in this era. Given 700+ PS3 games, 950+ X360 games, 1150+ Wii games, about 1200 DS Games, and about 700 PSP games released to date according to master game release lists, we can say that the top 40-50 games of the generation will represent a bit less than 1% of total game releases for the five current platforms (probably 2% with the substantial overlap of each library). Nonetheless, these 10m+ hits will still be 15-20% of total software sold out of the 6,000 or so games to eventually be released for these platforms.
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