RevoltTech Writes:
The Call of Duty franchise has become the most successful franchise of the current generation, with the highest launch numbers for both its Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops releases. Many question this success, stating that many other games have been released over the years which deserve the same success. Indeed, many games have been released this generation which have received huge critical acclaim. But why don’t they compare in the box office?
In honour of PlayStation's 30th birthday yesterday in the US, data company Circana has dug out figures showing the top 20 best-selling PlayStation video games ever (date-range Jan 1995 to July 2025). Don't get too excited.
This is a great reminder of how game sales have become more concentrated in a smaller number of games/series over time. In the PS1/PS2 era a game was a success if it sold a million or a few million copies. The GTA games (3/Vice City/San Andreas) were pretty big outliers in selling as much as they did during the PS2 era. So in the minds of a lot of gamers something like FF VII feels like it was as big of a PS1 game as God of War 2018 was for PS4, but in reality far fewer people bought it (though it has obviously reached additional people through remasters, etc.).
What this says to me is, not many people are buying a PS to play PS exclusives. Like so many false narratives, like Xbox gamers don't buy games! It seems Playstation as a default system is a vanilla system to play call of duty, Minecraft, GTA games and a sports games.
if you look back into the PS history, it has always been the 3rd parties who sells the most games. it was just that the PS1 and PS2 were so dominant that many of those 3rd party games were exclusives. so, back during the PS1 and PS2 days, the strategy was "to sell as many consoles as possible in order to sell more 1st party exclusives" to ride on that wave. The strategy to push many 1st party exclusives to sell consoles only started with the PS3 when many of those prior 3rd party exclusives went multiplat but more accurately, it started with the PSP.
Sony saw with the PSP, which was being trounced in sales by the DS, that 3rd party exclusives are hard to come by if you're not dominating the market. So they started building more 1st party games and when the PS3 were facing difficulties in sales, they knew they had to rely on their own to differentiate the PS3 from the 360. So the strategy back then changed to "release more 1st party exclusives in order to sell more consoles".
the only manufacturer that is still consistently selling their hardware to play 1st party exclusives, is Nintendo, and that was because they gave up the armrace for power thus they can't rely on 3rd parties anymore as all multiplats play better on competing consoles. AND that's also why they are the most ominous in going after emulators and also patent trolling!
so, you're not wrong there, but not an "aha!" moment or anything. it has been this way since the last, at least, 15 years for Playstation.
@zerobalance
So... what this tells you is that Call of duty, being the absolute check writer that it is, has been outsold by Last of us, God of war, 2 Spider man games..... Saying Playstation exclusives doesn't sell is like saying call of duty doesn't sell because they have outsold some of iterations. Does that make sense to you?
Licensing issues often leave many games forgotten. But all that aside, here are 10 classic games desperate for remasters.
The getaway
Smugglers run
Dead to rights
Worlds scariest police chases
Sure I’m missing a few.
Ape Escape.
Fun game but, wow, you need a college degree to understand the controls.
A remaster would also save you from having to constantly fight the camera.
Keep the music though. Those drum and bass tracks fit really well and haven't aged. Made me think that more games could work well with drum and bass tracks, but unfortunately it's a somewhat niche genre now.
i could have sworn i read somewhere that Remedy is remaking May Payne 1 but things have been quiet lately
One of the few Xbox games I own. I have 3 copies of it because of the many discs it has, for just in case reasons
Xenogears, Xenosaga trilogy, Vagrant Story, Drakengards, Parasite Eve and many more but I’ll start with those
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Zombies Terminus Island map is recreated for World at War and it looks scarier than the original version!
Simple addicting gameplay. That's all. It doesn't take more than 3 minutes to learn how ot play it.
Edit---after reading the article I sorta agree aswell. But take some sim shoters like operation flashpoint. One bullet to kill them, but it's hardcore compared to cod. I like Cod by the way i'm just saying. In other games I like the way conflicts take longer, you feel more like you've accomplished soemthing when fighting someone in gears, killzone or halo. Two people guarding an objective doesn't sound like much in Cod, but in the other 3, you have to watch yourself, the enemies feel like two tanks holding a position.
With that said, I still like COd, it's a good game to get on for a little while and have fun.
I have to agree, sometimes in other games you'll see an enemy but dont bother taking a shot cus you know you wont be able to get a kill with a few bullets
I think Killzone 3's going to get a huge following. But its exclusive so it wont beat COD in sales
I didnt buy black ops because I knew it would be more of the same
Honestly, if they took out some of the dumb perks and fixed huge lag/dropped games then it would deserve the sales
Nobody really buys it for the singeplayer
that's about it. all those numbers and sounds you hear while playing is subliminal. it makes you play more and more. while i do like cod's multiplayer, i prefer other types of games to balance out my library. no one genre overpowers the other.