PlayStation Turns 25, Top 10 Best-Selling Games on the Console - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 January 2020 / 6,754 Views
Sony's fifth generation console, the original PlayStation, turns 25 years old today in Japan. It will turn 25 years old in North America on September 9, 2020, and 25 in Europe on September 29, 2020. The home console was on the market from 1994 to 2006.
The PlayStation was the first console to sell 100 million units worldwide, as it sold 102.5 million units lifetime. That makes it the third best-selling console to date, with the PlayStation 2 selling over 157 million units lifetime and the PlayStation 4 selling over 102.5 million units through November 23, 2019.
Sony was recently awarded a Guinness World Record for the PlayStation brand as it is the "best-selling home video game console brand ever." The original PlayStation, PS2, PS3, and PS4 as of November 7 have sold over a combined 450 million units worldwide.
The original PlayStation sold 40.78 million units in North America, 31.09 million units in Europe, 21.59 million units in Japan, and 9.04 million units in the rest of the world.
962.01 million games were sold on the Original PlayStation. One game sold more than 10 million copies on the console, 16 games sold over five million copies, 65 games sold over two million copies, and 209 games sold over one million copies.
The first game in the popular racing series, Gran Turismo, was the best-selling game on the original PlayStation with 10.85 million units sold. Final Fantasy VII was the second best-selling game and best-selling third-party game on the console with 9.90 million units sold.
Gran Turismo 2 ranks third in sales with 9.37 million units sold lifetime, followed by Final Fantasy VIII with 8.60 million units sold. The fighting game, Tekken 3, rounds out the top five with sales of 8.30 million units.
The first three Crash Bandicoot games rank 6th, 7th and 8th on the charts. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back sold 7.58 million units, Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped sold 7.13 million units, and Crash Bandicoot sold 6.82 million units.
The action and driving game, Driver, sold 6.27 million units. The stealth game, Metal Gear Solid, rounds out the top 10 with sales of 6.00 million units.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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All of those franchises besides Driver still appear on PlayStation consoles regularly today.
RIP Driver. Would love another game in the style of San Francisco...
A lot of those franchises were brand new back then. Imagine if some tech giant entered the market today, and sold gangbusters numbers of brand new IPs on their new console.
Tekken 3 was my favourite game in the top 10. Regarding Driver, I knew it was popular, and oh my goodness did it get a bit marketing push, but I wouldn't have guessed it was in the top ten best seller's list.
The PS1 will always hold a special place in my heart.
So many warm and fuzzy memories of playing Crash, Spyro, and Croc over at my best mate's house.
What an incredible time for gaming. The best, to be honest. I mean, now THAT is a top 10 list unlike what we get now with the current era flooded with GTA's and COD's, etc. 4 of them are in my top 50 games of all time list. Hell yeah!
But wow, the best selling game is the only one that topped 10 million. Sales for games sure as hell went up now. Surprised Resident Evil 2 never made the list unfortunately.
Very cool to see 2 Final Fantasy games in the top 5 which would NEVER happen today. Makes you wonder...many games must have been pirated on the PS1. I mean, what was everyone playing???
Gaming was a much smaller market back then. Most gamers were kids so the attach ratio wasn't as high as it is today. For example I owned 10 N64 games back then. I own 60+ PS4 games today.
Yea, instead of GTA and CoD, it has 3 Crash games, 2 GT games and 2FF games, still flooded, just with different waters.
The racing games were so important for the console and the N64 struggled to have anything in that genre that was even close to the quality of Gran Turismo. There was no reason for this from a hardware standpoint but the fact remains that the PS1 owned that space. GT certainly doesn't command as much respect and market share these days despite the fact that the games are still of a high quality.
My favorite console with such a great list. Some of my favorite games of all time are in there. Long live the original PlayStation!
