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The more things change, the more they stay the same
This month marks 30 years since the PlayStation first launched in the US, and when it comes to pure sales numbers, Sony’s system has a whole bunch of Call of Duty and GTA games at the top of the charts. Analyst firm Circana has compiled a list of the 20 best-selling PlayStation games of all time in the US, with the top 20 not being too surprising overall.
As posted by Circana executive director Mat Piscatella, the list covers games released between 1995 and 2025, but not games that were packaged with a PlayStation console hardware bundle. One other thing to note here is that the first list below is based on units sold, and the second one is based on dollars earned.
Unsurprisingly, Grand Theft Auto 5 tops the units-sold chart, as Rockstar’s open-world game has been a top performer for years and across multiple console generations. Combined with other platforms, 215 million units of GTA 5 have been sold since the game launched in September 2013, and it’s a safe bet that a substantial number of those sales were on PlayStation 3, 4, and 5. Other titles from Rockstar Games on the units sold list include Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA: San Andreas, and Vice City.
While GTA 5 has the top spot, Call of Duty has a whole bunch of titles in the top 20 list. Out of all the games, there are nine Call of Duty titles that appear here, with 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare being the best-selling one overall. The game broke sales records for Activision after it was released, setting the bar high for future Call of Duty releases. Another interesting fact is that of those nine games, all six Black Ops titles are included here.
What of other games then? The list does feature several first-party titles here, as Marvel’s Spider-Man, The Last of Us, and 2018’s God of War all proved to be massively popular. You can see the full list for yourself below, and if you’re feeling nostalgic, you can also take a trip down memory lane to see the best-selling Sega Dreamcast games of all time in the US.
