Working with financial site Forbes.com, the NPD Group has
released a tally of the ten highest-selling home console games in North America since the firm began tracking video game sales.
The NPD Group has listed
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and
Guitar Hero 3 at the top two positions, the latter released in November 2007.
The
Grand Theft Auto and
Madden NFL series dominated the list, grabbing respectively three and four of the top ten spots in NPD's list.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, originally released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2 by Rockstar Games, was listed as the highest-selling game with 9.4 million units sold, including Xbox and PC copies.
Activision's
Guitar Hero 3's position as the second best-selling game on NPD's list comes as a surprise considering that the multi-platform music title shipped only seven months ago, its instrument bundle commanding a much higher price than every other game listed.
1.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar Games - PS2, Xbox - 2004) - 9.4 million
2.
Guitar Hero 3 (Activision - PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 - 2007) - 8.2 million
3.
Madden NFL 07 (EA Sports - PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube, Wii - 2006) - 7.7 million
4.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar Games - PlayStation 2, Xbox - 2002) - 7.3 million
5.
Madden NFL 06 (EA Sports - PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube - 2005) - 6.7 million
6.
Halo 2 (Microsoft Game Studios - Xbox - 2004) - 6.61 million
7.
Madden NFL 08 (EA Sports - PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube, Wii - 2007) - 6.6M
8.
Call of Duty 4 (Activision - PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 - 2007) - 6.25 million
9.
Grand Theft Auto 3 (Rockstar Games - PlayStation 2, Xbox - 2001) - 6.2 million
10.
Madden NFL 2005 (EA Sports - PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube - 2004) - 6.1 million
According to Forbes.com, despite reviewing sales data from the past 15 years, it found that the video game industry's best-selling titles have all debuted after 2001. The oldest title to appear in the list of top-selling games is
Grand Theft Auto 3, which was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2001.
