15 Highest-Grossing Video Games Of Last Decade

As some of the highest-grossing video games smash records, the video game industry is far from dead. The best sales over the last ten years are shown here.

This decade has provided gamers on all consoles with an overwhelming number of titles to plunge into and team up with to take on a variety of foes. This decade, which spanned 2011 to 2021, was perhaps the best and most successful since the 1990s, when Super Mario and Pokemon flooded television screens.

The decade had some of the most popular games in gaming history, from Grand Theft Auto V becoming the fastest-selling entertainment product in history to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds having over 3 million active players during the beginning of the battle royale phenomenon.

Tom Bowen’s update on June 7, 2021: 2020 proved to be a tremendously profitable year for the game business, despite being a dreadful year for humanity. With millions of individuals trapped inside owing to lockdowns and self-isolation, video game sales soared, resulting in record profits for many publishers and developers towards the conclusion of the fiscal year. While many of these sales were for newer titles, older games also performed well, boosting their already excellent total sales figures.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (32.5 Million Units)

nimal Crossing: New Horizons has outsold both Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild in terms of raw unit sales, while receiving a slightly lower critical reception. It has sold more over 32 million copies as of this writing, placing it among the top 20 best-selling video games of all time.

In practically every sense, the game is bigger and better than its predecessors, offering each player their own island to create and inhabit as they see fit. Sales were likely aided by the fact that the game was released around the start of the Covid 19 pandemic, when people all over the world were trapped inside for months with little to do.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (26.5 Million Units)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 had high expectations after the critical and commercial success of Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops. Though not exactly on the same level as its predecessors in terms of gameplay, the game mainly met those expectations and went on to sell millions of copies.

The game sold 26.5 million units across all platforms, narrowly edging out its predecessor to become the series’ second best-selling title of all time. The title has now sold over 400 million copies worldwide, making it the third best-selling video game franchise in history, trailing only Mario and Tetris.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (30 Million Units)

The Modern Warfare revival debuted on October 25th, 2019, and grossed over $600 million in its first three days, giving it Activision’s best-ever digital debut. Most gamers seemed to agree that this was one of the best Call of Duty games yet, with reviewers praising the game’s faithful re-imagining of the original.

With over 30 million copies sold, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has generated over $1 billion in sales. This makes it one of the best-selling Call of Duty games of all time, as well as one of the best-selling games of 2020.

Diablo 3 (30 Million Units)

Blizzard Entertainment released Diablo III in 2012. The game was released more than a decade after the second installment in the series, with console ports following in the following years. Diablo III: Eternal Collection, a Nintendo Switch port of the game, was released in 2018.

With such a large interval between titles, there was a lot of excitement when the third installment was released on May 15th. With over 30 million copies sold globally, Diablo III has become one of the most pre-ordered PC games on Amazon, outselling titles such as Grand Theft Auto IV and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

FIFA 18 (24 Million Units)

Few series have sold as many copies as FIFA when it comes to sports simulation games. EA’s microtransaction-filled abomination, like the sport it depicts, is a worldwide phenomenon, with each game selling tens of millions of copies. FIFA 18, on the other hand, has been the most successful of them all.

Despite the fact that the game didn’t provide much in the way of innovation when compared to some of its predecessors, the fact that it was released during a World Cup year undoubtedly contributed a lot to its 24 million sales. It also received positive reviews from critics, earning several game of the year honors and a Metacritic score of 84.

Grand Theft Auto V (145 Million Units)

On September 17th, 2013, Rockstar Games launched the fifth mainstream installment in its enormously successful series. Grand Theft Auto V was originally exclusively available on seventh-generation consoles, but it has subsequently been ported to eighth- and ninth-generation consoles, as well as the PC, grossing over six billion dollars from over 145 million sales worldwide.

The best-selling digital title on the PS3 made approximately $800 million in the first 24 hours of its release, and nearly $1 billion in the first three days. Only a single product managed to sell more copies than the widely anticipated sequel, which went on to become the second best-selling video game of all time.

Minecraft (200 Million Units)

his blocky, randomly generated sandbox game was first released for the PC in 2011, before being ported to consoles and handheld platforms. Minecraft now has over 100 million active players all across the world, and it has won numerous honors over its history.

Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time, with over 200 million copies sold since its release on November 18th, 2011, easily surpassing out Grand Theft Auto V, Tetris, Wii Sports, and Pac-Man. Given how popular the game remains, that number is sure to increase even higher.

Mario Kart 8 (44 Million Units)

On May 29th, 2014, Nintendo published the eighth mainline installment in its long-running kart racing series for the Wii U. Mario Kart 8 soon became the best-selling Wii U game of all time, which is somewhat unsurprising. It sold almost 8 million copies, nearly 3 million more than Super Mario 3D World, the second best-selling game.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which debuted for the Nintendo Switch in 2017, is an improved version of the game that, like its predecessor, is the best-selling on the system. According to Nintendo, the Switch has already sold over 35 million copies, bringing the total number of units sold to roughly 44 million.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (70 Million Units)

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the game that helped popularize the battle royale genre, was released on Steam on December 20th, 2017 and quickly spread to other platforms. The game has sold over 70 million copies worldwide since its release, outselling Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and The Last of Us combined.

Battlegrounds produced over $10 million in the first three days of its early access release on Windows in early 2017, and has since grossed over $4 billion. With more than 300 million downloads worldwide, the game is among the top five best-selling video games of all time, trailing only Wii Sports, Tetris, and two more big hits from the decade.

Pokemon Sun & Moon (25 Million Units)

If releasing two games at once is a solid method to boost sales, releasing four at once may be sheer genius. Despite the fact that Pokemon Sun & Moon and their Ultra versions were released over a year apart, they’re all considered part of the seventh generation of Pokemon games, which has now sold over 25 million copies.

Sun & Moon were the last mainline Pokemon games to be released on the 3DS, following the enormously successful Pokemon X & Y. They also added regional variants to the series. Sword & Shield appears to be on the verge of overtaking them in terms of sales, albeit for the time being, the eighth-gen games fall just short, with roughly 21 million sales between them.

Red Dead Redemption 2 (37 Million Units)

Red Dead Redemption 2, the long-awaited sequel to Rockstar’s 2010 open-world western, was published on October 26th, 2018. The game follows outlaw Arthur Morgan, John Marston, the protagonist from the original Red Dead Redemption game, and their group as they go through 1899 and the Wild West’s fall.

Within the first three days of its release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2018, the game raked in over $700 million in revenue. It has now been made accessible for PC and Stadia users, and it has sold over 37 million copies, solidifying its position as one of the best-selling video games of the last decade.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (30 Million Units)

After a few delays, 2015’s Game of the Year was released on May 19th, 2015 for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, with a Nintendo Switch release planned for 2019. Two content-packed expansions for The Witcher 3 were eventually included with the game as a full edition.

CD Projekt Red’s RPG about a silver-haired monster-slaying Witcher, his horse, and a big collection of Gwent cards drew over 1.5 million pre-orders before its release and has since sold over 30 million copies, thanks in large part to its DLC and the Netflix series, which launched in 2019.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (24 Million Units)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, widely regarded as the best Zelda game of all time, was published in March 2017 for both the Wii U and the Switch. Since then, it has sold over 24 million copies, the vast majority of which were sold on the Nintendo Switch.

The addition of weapon durability and cooking features did not please everyone, but the vast scale of Hyrule and the game’s stunning art style delighted both fans and critics. In addition to its strong sales, the game has a Metacritic score of 97 and has won numerous awards since its release.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (30 Million Units)

Terraria was first published for the PC on May 16th, 2011, and has subsequently been ported to the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Vita, and most mobile devices. The indie product sold 200,000 copies in its first week of release and has since gone on to sell over 35 million copies.

Terraria has surpassed The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons to become one of the top 15 best-selling video games of all time. Given that the aforementioned films had much larger budgets, this is a truly remarkable achievement.