What you need to know
- The final NPD report of 2019 has revealed the best-selling games of the decade.
- Grand Theft Auto V is the best-selling game of the decade.
- Several other games on the list are Call of Duty titles.
While the December 2019 NPD report has been released, there's also some additional information available that pertains to the entire past decade of gaming. The NPD Group provided GamesIndustry.biz with the details on the best-selling games in the U.S. over the past decade. You can see the list below (which is based on dollar sales, not units). Do note that digital tracking began in 2012.
Here's the best-selling games of the decade:
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Call of Duty: Black Ops
- Call of Duty: Black Ops II
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III
- Call of Duty: Ghosts
- Red Dead Redemption II
- Call of Duty: WWII
- Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII
- Minecraft
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019
- Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Mario Kart 8
- Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
- Battlefield 1
- Battlefield 4
- Destiny
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Star Wars Battlefront 2015
There's a bit of a pattern, with seven Call of Duty games in the top ten games. Grand Theft Auto V has continued to be an utter juggernaut and to no real surprise took the top place. Red Dead Redemption II managed to make the #7 spot on the list. Building phenomenon Minecraft is the tenth best-selling game on the list. The most recent game to be present on this list is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019, which is the best-selling game of 2019 in the U.S.
It's also important to remember that Nintendo does not provide digital numbers for its games, making it noteworthy that two games, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8, managed to make the list anyways. Moving away from software into hardware, NPD also confirmed that the PlayStation 4 was the best-selling individual hardware over the past decade.
Heists are waiting
Grand Theft Auto V is a massive game from Rockstar that allows players to live out their high-stakes criminal dreams. A huge campaign focuses on three very different men drawn together by circumstance, while GTA Online continues to grow with constant updates.
