It’s no secret that today’s most popular games are a lot more user-friendly and a lot less rewarding for hardcore FPS gamers, but which game exactly is to blame for it? We’ve gathered up five of the top suspects for questioning, each with their own hand in today’s derp derp world of air strikes and incapacitating weaponry.
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?
Eight seminal games were released on the gaming market between October 26 and November 23, 2004. Twenty years later, here's Wccftech's retrospective.
You're not gonna include Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal or Jak 3 on that list? Just change it to Fall 2004 Releases and include the masterpiece that is Sly 2.
Everything you need to know about Modern Warfare III coming to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.
Will be interesting to see what sort of numbers GP users draw in come tomorrow. It is believed that this is one many have been waiting for.
Darth,
That is not accurate; this game is old, and most people who want it have already bought it. You might get a small number of subs, but we will mostly see a good influx of players(not new subs) from people with Game Pass who will try it, which is what happened with D4.
CoD: BO 6 will be the test for actual sub numbers.
That's fair... seeing as many have been saying they want CoD in GP. My comment was more of , now that its here... what can it do. Im sure there will be other titles in the franchise that will either entice or turn off different users.
No one's buying a console and signing up for a monthly bill just to get this game to avoid buying it. That's ridiculous. Besides everyone bagged the crap out of this on release for the 4 hour campaign.
Skill based fps games still exist, it's just a matter of finding them. More often than not it's a case of skills having to be rearranged and retrained and older players of older games view this change in direction as a decrease in skill required but in reality that's not the case. While games are getting easier in many respects I'd hardly call CS:S a casual noob fest. Yeah it's a little bit easier but can you can really picture valve in their offices laughing hysterically at the thought of destroying the counter strike community?
Or, more realistically, did they just want to do a bit of fan service by remaking an older game with better visuals and distributing it for free? Counter strike source is hardly unfriendly to mods to either. If you want to make it harder just make a little mod and bam, there you go.
At the end of the day this all just boils down to the same thing you hear every day with vinyls, clubs, bands, movies and all things entertainment based - "God *brushes fringe to the side while toying with ear plug* this INSERT ANYTHING used to have integrity before it got popular".
Why? Because of this:
"COD leans a little more on the simulation side of things, and Counter-Strike leans a bit more on the arcade side."
You have got to be SH*TTING ME!
I totally agree about halo. Halo 2 and all other halos are crap compared to CE. Thats why microsoft pissed their pants and nerfed the multiplayer in The halo CE remake because they know half the user base would dump halo reach for CE. So now they give the CE remake crappy reach gameplay and make it worthless to play.
Lol @ people thinking that all the games mentioned don't require skill.
If someone is consistently better at a game then they have more skill - doesn't matter how easy the controls are.
...as long as they don't cheat of course.