With PlayStation‘s reputation for publishing must-play, first-party exclusives, you would think Sony would have a significant presence in the console line’s all-time games sales, but that’s not the case. New sales data shows another publisher dominating, highlighting the importance of third-party titles.
Gaming commentator Genki shared a screenshot of data compiled by Circana, a market research company that tracks video game software and hardware sales. When measured by both dollar sales and unit sales, Activision is by far the most prominent publisher to appear among the best-selling PlayStation games of all time. Activision’s overwhelming presence is – likely unsurprisingly – driven by Call of Duty, the yearly, monolithic first-person shooter series.
Activision Dominates PlayStation Overall Sales Charts
CoD Reigns
When calculating by dollar sales, Activision published 12 of the top 20 best-selling PlayStation games of all time. 11 were Call of Duty titles, with the 12th being Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. Unit sales are only slightly different, with nine Activision-published titles in the top 20, all of which are CoD. In a very distant second place is Rockstar Games, which boasts three Grand Theft Auto titles and Red Dead Redemption 2 on both sides of the chart.
Rockstar’s GTA 5 holds the top spot in both dollar and unit sales, while RDR2 claims both third-place finishes. The sheer volume of Activision bestsellers aside, the publisher’s best ranking is Modern Warfare (2019), which has the second-best dollar sales and fifth-best unit sales of any PlayStation release ever. In dollar sales, Modern Warfare 2 (2022) and Black Ops 6 round out the top five.
There Aren’t Many First Party Sony Games On The List
Everybody Loves Spider-Man
PlayStation’s first-party exclusives are frequently highly acclaimed, and often considered must-play games of any given console generation, but only a select few appear among the very bestsellers. Every PlayStation-published game that appears in the top 20 is as follows: Marvel’s Spider-Man at 11th in dollar sales and sixth in unit sales; Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 at 18th in dollar sales; Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales at 19th in dollar sales and 12th in unit sales; The Last of Us at 13th in unit sales; and God of War (2018) at 14th in unit sales.
Circana’s data does not include games sold in console bundles, which may be a factor, but it’s still quite astounding to see Sony have such a limited presence in all-time sales on its own platform. Activision’s dominance is effectively Call of Duty‘s ubiquity; even the more derided entries fly up the sales charts in their respective year. In some ways, looking at just these top 20 in two metrics is almost not helpful, simply because CoD washes out any sort of interesting data. It also shows why Microsoft chose to keep CoD multi-platform – it sells in massive quantities on PlayStation.
- Brand
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Sony
- Original Release Date
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November 19, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$399.99 (Digital Only), $499.99 (Disc Drive)
- Weight
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Digital Edition now weighs 3.4 kg & base version weighs 3.9 kg
The fifth flagship video game console from Sony Computer Entertainment, the PlayStation 5, is a part of the ninth generation of consoles. The console features full backwards compatibility with PlayStation 4 games and features a digital storefront that gives access to older generations. The console can output images at 4K resolution, with alternative options including 1440p at 120 frames per second for gameplay. This console is also known for implementing 3D audio, which allows headphones to be connected to the console for simulated spatially accurate audio.
