{"id":422,"date":"2006-09-06T15:19:03","date_gmt":"2006-09-06T19:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/09\/06\/top-selling-pc-games-of-the-new-century\/"},"modified":"2006-09-06T15:19:03","modified_gmt":"2006-09-06T19:19:03","slug":"top-selling-pc-games-of-the-new-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/09\/06\/top-selling-pc-games-of-the-new-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Selling PC Games of the new century"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are halfway through this decade, so it makes sense to have a list like this<\/a>. Doing it by sales is certainly not as iffy a proposition as doing it by opinion or Gamerankings, but it’s certainly not perfect. The NPD numbers are the best we have, but are still not completely reliable, especially for online transactions. And Next Gen decides to start the century in 2000 instead of the correct 2001. (I’m feeling pedantic today.)<\/p>\n

Sure, they cheat a little by only including the best selling game of a particular franchise. (If Age of Empires III<\/em> hasn’t outsold Ultimate Mahjohng<\/em>, Microsoft must be very unhappy.) It would be interesting to see the whole list laid out, though the top 12 would all be Sims<\/em> games.<\/p>\n

No major surprises for strategy gamers on the list. The sales of Civ III<\/em> (No. 21) apparently outdid those of Civ IV<\/em>, since the former makes the list and the latter is just lumped in with “other franchise titles” (which curiously includes the Activision Call to Power<\/em> games.) Yeah, it’s only US sales and a sale based list will favor games that have had price reductions – the long tail of sales.<\/p>\n

A look at the top ten<\/a> reveals how lucrative the strategy and sim genre is. Six of ten are either Tycoon games, RTS or The Sims<\/em> – which is in a category all its own. The impression of many that Age of Mythology<\/em> was not a well-received mass hit is revealed as false. It was huge. Bigger than the Age of Kings<\/em> expansion. Step back to do a top twenty look and we only get two more RTS added to the list (the aforemention Conquerors<\/em> add-on to AoK and Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2<\/em>.) But they’re 11 and 12 – not 16 and 19.<\/p>\n

It’s also worth noting how few of the top 50 are what you would call “bad games” (judging by the collective wisdom via Gamerankings). The successful games that score under 75 percent (the bottom line of good for many people) are movie tie-ins or riding on the crest of a cultural touchstone like Who Wants to Be A Millionaire<\/em>. Find a list of the top 20 grossing movies for this century and you will see a lot of crap. Same with books. Same with TV. Maybe it’s because games are really hard to screw up so bad that your GR score will dip below 70 – lots of sites don’t venture even that low unless it’s time to pick on Deer Hunter<\/em> (no. 81 on the list, GR score of 71.)<\/p>\n

I won’t repeat their entire list – that would be wrong, and a waste of my time since you can read it over there. Children’s games do well, game show games do well (Survivor<\/em> is no. 77) and the hits you expect are there.<\/p>\n

Reflect, ruminate and comment below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are halfway through this decade, so it makes sense to have a list like this. Doing it by sales is certainly not as iffy a proposition as doing it by opinion or Gamerankings, but it’s certainly not perfect. The NPD numbers are the best we have, but are still not completely reliable, especially for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-6O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}