And the all-time bestselling video game franchise is...

[mr_pikachu]

...

...well, uh, Mario. Dang it.

But Pokémon is an astonishingly strong number two on that list. Outclassing the likes of Zelda, Final Fantasy, GTA, and Tetris, the various Pokémon games have sold a spectacular 164 million copies according to a Yahoo! report. That leaves them only 31 million behind Mario (who, to be fair, has had over two decades to work with) and a whopping 74 million beyond the reach of third-place finisher, The Sims.

Considering the closeness between Mario and Pokémon in sales, and the fact that Mario's had twice as much time to build his figures, one has to wonder if Pokémon will soon dominate all competitors. Some might argue it could happen as soon as the anticipated third game of the DP generation, while others might think a few trios down the line is a more reasonable time frame. And still others may argue that it won't happen at all. Can we expect to eventually pass even the legendary Jumpman to take the throne of video gaming?

Discuss!



Short list of sales totals in million units sold (for those who are too lazy to read the article):

(Spoiler:)
1. .Mario. . . . . . . 195
2. .Pokémon. . . . . . 164
3. .The Sims . . . . . .90
4. .Final Fantasy. . . .75
5. .Grand Theft Auto . .65
6. .Tetris . . . . . . .60
7. .Madden NFL . . . . .60
8. .The Legend of Zelda 52
9. .Donkey Kong. . . . .48
10. Gran Turismo . . . .47


P.S. We seriously need to bring the table functions back to the forum. ^_^;;

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Gyaa haa haa! Pokémon beat Sims! Now I'm happy. Thanks for saving the day, mr_pikachu.

Mario deserves his place in my opinion. But Pokémon has had so many helpers with all that, I mean a popular anime, trading card game, and so on. So it's not a wonder those games have sold so well, too. I am not talking about hidden advertisement, but for example I would never have bought the games if the anime wasn't there.

[Crystalmaster Mike]

And still, people will class it under "kiddy stuff"... ^^'' Mmmyeah.

Well, kudos to Tajiri and Game Freak, may there franchise flourish, may our children be gifted by knowing about these monsters, may the streets be filled with NDS-playing PokéMasters...

Yeah. Maybe they can close the gap by producing a Pokémon X generation. You know: Goor and Gruesome Version, rated 16+. It might be more appealing for most people, as legal "adults", to buy a game with a blood-fanged Charizard on the box instead of the normal, more cartoon-esque, funny chubby 'Zard.

[Austrian ViceMaster Alex]

Nothing surprising about the first two positions in my opinion. Though the Mario franchise has been around for longer I think Pokémon has simply a broader target group to satisfy and thus can sell better.

I'm quite surprised that Zelda is only at rank 8 though and only narrowly in front of Donkey Kong. But then Zelda games are only released once every few years.

[Blademaster]

Pokemon isn't gonna surpass Mario anytime in the near future: The main problem with Pokemon games is that they're all so similar and boring nowadays. There's nothing but a bunch of handheld RPG's, a few Stadium-esque games, and a handful of random ones that mostly suck. Pokemon is a fine franchise, no question about it, but it just hasn't earned the number one spot yet...

Mario, on the other hand, has always been revolutionary. From the original Donkey Kong on, there was no stopping him from becoming the King of Games (Yugi Motou, eat your heart out.). SMB and SMB3 gave him his own click and cemented his position, and games like Mario Party, Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. (Not technically a Mario game, but the title kinda suggests something...), and Super Mario 64 have all just pushed the portly plumber higher and higher up the charts. Now, with Galaxy's release only a month away... I dunno... Mario's gonna top 200 million pretty soon.

[Houndoom_Lover]

I agree, not because Blademaster is wearing my pants- Pokemon has become redundant, and like Harry Potter; people don't want to say they like it because EVERYBODY at one time liked it, the jerk faces deflected, the jerk faced labled it childish, and now when you mention Pokemon people just roll their eyes, and talk about something else.

But when people say MARIO, they say- I love that little plumber, want to play the wii after school, I've got Doctor Mario! Sweet! I'll play! It's strange...I don't know why. It's the same thing with Naruto and vampires. It's became too mainstream, to tiresome. It's labled negitivly for some reason by the jerk faces, and they're the ones who rule the world...(until you're out of collegde, then they work for you, unless you work for them.)

[AdventureSerum]

LoZ sold less than FOOTBALL?! WTF!

[Houndoom_Lover]

What's Gran Turismo, anyway?

[Blademaster]

LoZ sold less than FOOTBALL?! WTF!

My sentiments exactly.

Never underestimate the power of new graphics combined with a roster update...

[AdventureSerum]

... You know why Pokemon is REALLY doing so well?
It's those Pokemon gummy snacks they used to make. Those were AWESOME. I really miss those things. I'd say that I ate them like candy, except they were candy.

[classy_cat18]

What's Gran Turismo, anyway?

It's a well-known racing series for the Playstation platforms. A good one too; the visuals are awesome.

[Houndoom_Lover]

XD Really? I never heard of it, but I'm a Crash Bandicoot, Spryo, Digimon monging person who tends to avoid racing game...OOOh, but I love the Hot Wheels game for PSone.

[DarkestLight]

Whoa Hot Wheels. Takes me back a decade xD.

Anyway, I was gonna say earlier, but got sidetracked-that Pokemon will surpass Mario in the next 3 years. Its gonna be neck and neck after that, and then something will occur that blasts them both and one will emerge the clear victor.

The main thing Pokemon beats Mario at is SHEER NUMBER OF CRAP YOU CAN SLAP POKEMON ON! You can slap Mario on anything, but Mario at least has tact. I haven't seen Mario on a thong, but I've seen Pikachu on one.

Pokemon dive on candy. When was the last recent time you seen Mario on candy? Juice? Sandwiches? BREAD? FRICKIN' BREAD? But OMG U LIKE MUDKIPS! is on bread. -.-

Yeah. Pokemon is ruthless in advertising.


Then again, I did make and sell bootlegs first Generation Pokemon cards while they were hot in Harlem on the street That was an awesome summer. I walked around and "worked"! Mad kids got so many fake Venusaur and Charizard hologram cards. XD!

[Houndoom_Lover]

Now forever the image of Mario in a thong will haunt my dreams.

[AdventureSerum]

And where, pray tell, did you see such a miraculous thing?

[Jeff]

My sentiments exactly.

Never underestimate the power of new graphics combined with a roster update...

Which is exactly why Pokemon is doing so well.

What I'd be more interested to see is the number of games sold divided by the number of years the series has been around. I'm pretty sure Pokemon would be at the top of that list.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

What I'd be more interested to see is the number of games sold divided by the number of years the series has been around. I'm pretty sure Pokemon would be at the top of that list.

Can't someone here calculate this for those games? I may try, but give me time. However, Pokémon has been there for 11 years, and I think some newer games would do well in that perspective.

[mr_pikachu]

Can't someone here calculate this for those games? I may try, but give me time. However, Pokémon has been there for 11 years, and I think some newer games would do well in that perspective.

Using Wikipedia as my source, we have the following starting years for the top ten sellers:


(Spoiler:)
1. .Mario. . . . . . . .1981
2. .Pokémon. . . . . . .1996
3. .The Sims . . . . . .2000
4. .Final Fantasy. . . .1987
5. .Grand Theft Auto . .1998
6. .Tetris . . . . . . .1985
7. .Madden NFL . . . . .1989
8. .The Legend of Zelda 1986
9. .Donkey Kong. . . . .1981
10. Gran Turismo . . . .1997



And now, the yearly average in millions (calculating the total number of years as [2007 - initial release year]):


(Spoiler:)

1. .Pokémon. . . . . . .14.91
2. .The Sims . . . . . .12.86
3. .Mario. . . . . . . . 7.50
4. .Grand Theft Auto . . 7.22
5. .Gran Turismo . . . . 4.70
6. .Final Fantasy. . . . 3.75
7. .Madden NFL . . . . . 3.33
8. .Tetris . . . . . . . 2.73
9. .The Legend of Zelda. 2.48
10. Donkey Kong. . . . . 1.85

[Crystalmaster Mike]

Well, that gives us some perspective, doesn't it? Surprising how Mario suddenly is pushed down that much. I suppose it's all due to marketing strategies, after all, and that Pokémon isn't a sole video game franchise.

[Jeff]

Yup, just as I predicted, Pokemon is at the top. Now keep in mind, these figures represent a rate of games being sold. Pokemon sells ~14.91 million a year and Mario sells ~7.5 million a year so...

(Spoiler:)
After 2 years:
Mario: 210
Pokemon: 193.82
After 4 years:
Mario: 225
Pokemon: 223.64
After 5 years:
Mario: 232.5
Pokemon: 238.55
So at this rate, Pokemon games will overtake Mario games in sales in 5 years, 2012, likely during pokemon's 5th generation


Of course this is an estimate, the real numbers will fluctuate. Galaxy comes out, Mario's number goes up, GS remakes come out, third DP game comes out, both cause Pokemon's numbers to go up. It could happen with the first 5th gen games, and then Mario could take back the throne for a while only to get surpassed by Pokemon again. There won't be any one point when it's going to happen, but it'll happen.

[Crazy Elf Boy]

All I can say for this is that I am really dissapointed in Legend of Zelda was beaten by Madden. Becase I think its is a better game. Also with the release of Phantom Hourglass this week I would like to check out the new stats for that.

Ont he subject of Pokemon over Mario, Most people think that they all hate Pokemon because it has been "labeled" as childish, but you can be sure they have at least one piece of pokemon memoribillia (sp?). But I think Mario will still go strong, since the characters are very verstile by making games from everything to from Sport to games were your main method of attack is pretty much using a water pistol. But I think that the Pokemon games aren't just pulling in enough new fans. This is because the one thing I think that made Pokemon special back in the day was that it did have a television show that sort of went along with the story lines in the game. But as you can see now days nearly every game has a TV or movie to back it up. This might be different for you people in the US. But I grew up in a small country town in the middle of Australia where we only got our shot of anime in the mornings and the only good thing on was Pokemon. So it steadily became a craze in our town with little competition because of our "isolation" from the rest of the world.

But I do think if pokemon had a new idea that had never been done before there would just be a giant explosion of fans waiting to buy the game.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

This brings back memories! I'm posting after Crazy Elf Boy!

In Finland, the most common opinion I have heard is that Pokémon is dead. Not dead to me, but somehow the other people just don't see that you can still play those games and watch the series although they are no longer in headlines of magazines and newspapers beause of epileptic seizures, hidden advertising in Pokérap and how it made children lose focus at school. The latter was an opinion brought by adults early 2000, when Pokémon trading cards hit classrooms and, they said, hindered schoolwork. That resulted in banning Pokémon for a couple of months and deleting PokéRap and Who's that Pokémon from the Kanto episodes, by the way.

Perhaps this shows that Finland is in isolation, too. Pokémon was here before Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z and Neon Genesis Evangelion and without it animes would never had so much attention here.

I don't know if I went too far from the original topic, but the main point is that Pokémon still has its fans.