How do video games stack up compared to movies when it comes to gross revenues? We’ve rounded up the top 10 highest grossing video games ever, based on worldwide sales through the end of 2011. DLC sales are not included.

10: Modern Warfare: $700 million

The Call of Duty series went into the modern era with a bang: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was released in 2007 and spawned an instant franchise. Modern Warfare would go on to sell millions of copies across multiple platforms, eventually generating over $700 million in revenue.

9: The Sims: $740 million

The original Sims was released in 2000 and became a best seller among casual and female gamers. The Sims has since become one of the highest grossing PC games ever, generating over $500 million in revenue on PC alone, and $740 million in total.

8: Modern Warfare 2: $780 million

The sequel to Activision’s Modern Warfare wasn’t as groundbreaking as the original, but it still managed to out-gross it, reaching $780 million.

7: Gran Turismo 3/GTA San Andreas (tied): $850 million

Gran Turismo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 3 are two of the best selling and highest grossing PlayStation 2 games ever. Both have generated around $850 million in revenue. However, GTA San Andreas was also released on the Xbox and PC platforms, and was later released on the Xbox 360 as well.

6: New Super Mario Bros. $1,2 billion

New Super Mario Bros. was the first must-have title on the Nintendo Wii. The game gathered great reviews and quickly became a top seller for Nintendo. In just two years, the game passed the $1 billion mark, and has to date generated $1.2 billion in revenue. But even then, it’s still only the 3rd highest grossing Wii game ever.

5: Wii Play: $1.25 billion

Everyone who bought a Wii got Wii Sports, and Wii Play was a natural extension to the bundled title. Wii Play was packaged with a Wiimote and sold separately as well. Despite lackluster reviews, Wii Play went on to sell almost 27 million copies, generating $1.25 billion in revenue for Nintendo.

4: Grand Theft Auto 4: $1,35 billion

Grand Theft Auto was one of the most anticipated titles on the current generation consoles, and gamers had huge expectations for the title. So did Rockstar, who spent $100 million developing the game. But it turned out to be a good business decision: GTA 4 grossed $1,35 billion, making it the highest grossing game in Rockstar’s history.

3: Mario Kart Wii: $1.4 billion

The best selling game for the best selling current-gen console, Mario Kart Wii, was released 2008 and was an instant hit with gamers and critics. It has since sold over 28 million copies, generating $1.4 billion in revenue — the highest grossing Nintendo game of all time.

2: Call of Duty: Black Ops: $1,5 billion

Black Ops took Call of Duty to an all new level: it grossed more than Modern Warfare 1 and 2, combined. This makes Call of Duty Black Ops the best selling title across all current-gen consoles. In all, Black Ops grossed $1.5 billion, and that’s without DLC — DLC packs which have sold millions of copies as well.

1: World of Warcraft: $10+ billion

Not only has World of Warcraft sold over 15 million copies (including expansions), but it has had a base of around 11 million paying subscribers for more than half a decade. This alone brings in over $1.5 billion per year. Overall, World of Warcraft is estimated to have generated over $10 billion in revenue to date.

Following in the footsteps of Street Fighter X Tekken, Team Ninja head, Yosuke Hayashi, revealed that the developer is very interesting in doing a crossover title with another fighter series. Furthermore, he expressed heavy interest in doing so with SEGA’s Virtua Fighter franchise.

He went on:

In terms of collaboration titles, there are staff on our team who just love fighting games and if there was any chance to do that we’d actively, possibly do that. The first 3D game I played was Virtua Fighter, that’s the IP I respect most. Virtua Fighter was the father of 3D gaming, so it’s very well respected.

Also, speaking on the upcoming Dead or Alive 5 title, Hayashi said he would be more respectful toward female design now.

Up to now we thought, with other games, let’s show the beauty of a woman. How do we do that? Make her breasts big and just make them jiggle, that was the concept.

Dead or Alive 5 will release later this year, with a demo of the game being offered as a preorder bonus for, Ninja Gaiden III, which is set for release March 20.

As apart of a Q&A feature today from Rockstar Games’ official website titled Asked & Answered, the company says a sequel to L.A. Noire is a “possibility.”

The company says, although busy with Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto V at the moment, “don’t count out the possibility of a new game in the L.A. Noire franchise in the future.” They continued:

We’re all very pleased with how that game turned out and are considering what the future may hold for L.A. Noire as a series. We don’t always rush to make sequels, but that does not mean we won’t get to them eventually – see Max and Red Dead for evidence of that – we have so many games we want to make and the issue is always one of bandwidth and timing.

While there isn’t any DLC planned for the near future of the game, we’re sure there will be a return of the series, as Rockstar stated themselves, the company definitely gets to their games eventually, as seen with Red Dead and Max Payne.

Epic’s Mark Reign revealed today that the very beautiful Unreal Engine 4 will be seen “later this year,” but says that games won’t be able to run on the engine until 2014. Last week at DICE, Reign told G4 “people are going to be shocked later this year when they see Unreal Engine 4 and how much more profound an effect it will have.” If that’s not exicing enough, just look at the beautiful image enclosed in this post. This definitely makes sense, considering that we will be seeing some next gen console previews later in 2012, as well.

Last week we published an editorial called “The Hypocracy of PC gamers“. We’ve received a ton of feedback and emails from readers, some good, some bad, but we also got emails from a few game developers as well. One developer wanted to share his story on how piracy affected his studio. These are his thoughts.

I run a small independent PC game studio (which will remain anonymous), and we have a slate of smaller puzzle and RPG games that we’ve made since 2009. We sell the games on Steam and other downloadable services, in addition to selling them on our own site, completely DRM-free. In 2011, we had 12 developers and artists working on new titles, and working on getting our games on the iOS platform. Sales were decent throughout the years, enough to support us and ensure that we could keep updating our games. Then our entire catalog of games was posted on The Pirate Bay and spread to other torrent sites.

“The “bundle” of games hit the torrent sites in January 2011, and by March, sales were down 50%. By May, they were down 80%”We didn’t think much of it at first, piracy affects everyone in this industry, and we believed that sales wouldn’t be affected too much and that gamers would appreciate supporting the devs and buying DRM free games. Then sales went down. A lot. The “bundle” of games hit the torrent sites in January 2011, and by March, sales were down 50%. By May, they were down 80%. We tried to respond to the piracy of our games in several ways. We lowered the price on Steam by 33%. Sales picked up a tiny bit, but it’s impossible because you’re competing with free. We had Steam sales, bundle packs, everything we could. It wasn’t enough, and by October of 2011, I had to let go half of my team — 6 people. We’ve restructured now to focus entirely on iOS games. I dunno how it’ll turn out, but developing on PC and supporting our PC games is not an option any longer. We just can’t afford it.

It’s easy for gamers and game journalists to get on their soapbox and proclaim they know how to fix the piracy issue, they always seem to “know” what developers should do (“Put it on Steam”. “Don’t use DRM”, “Use clever advertising” etc.). But you’re not the ones who have to manage a studio, you’re not the ones who have to make sure your developers get paid so they can feed their families. Our studio was doing just fine before our games hit the pirate channels. Then it all went downhill.

There are some claims that piracy causes millions of lost jobs in the US. I dunno about those numbers, maybe they’re true, maybe they’re much lower. But I know that piracy cost at least 6 jobs in 2011. Six people that I had to fire. Talented, hard-working folks with families.

So to all of you Pirate Bay supporters, all of you “experts” on Internet freedom who support “sharing” and who claim that “it’s not stealing”. From the bottom of my heart and on behalf of those 6 people: fuck you.

UPDATE: Our contributor emailed in this addition to the post: “For all those who ask: I won’t name my company nor the games we make. I’m fully aware that my statements go against most gamer’s beliefs on piracy and I have no intentions of drawing the wrath of the Internet to my company, which is already struggling. And this has nothing to do with quality — our games had a great fan base and we were doing just fine for two years before the games hit the torrent networks.”

Microsoft recently filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum in order to get the domain name halo4beta dot net (don’t visit the site, it’s a phishing scam). The site claims to offer Halo 4 beta access, but it’s in fact just a way of scamming users. It’s not the first time we’ve seen something like this, and it’s good that Microsoft is taking swift action. Unfortunately, this being the Internet, it can be quite difficult to track down the owner and operator of the domain.

The next generation Xbox console, rumored to be named Xbox 720, will be sporting a GPU based on the Radeon 6000 series, according to a rumor from IGN. The Radeon 6000 series was launched last year, and the Xbox 720 version will reportedly be close to the Radeon HD 6670 — a mid-range GPU. Despite being a mid-range GPU in 2011, it’s still said to be 6 times more powerful than the current Xbox 360 ATI GPU. Mass production of the chip is said to start in late 2012, which could mean a new console launch at the very end of 2012 or the beginning of 2013. Compared to the Wii U, another new console that’s launching this year, the Xbox 720 GPU will be around 20% more powerful.

More and more clues are emerging about next generation of video game consoles that should be released within two years. The latest clue comes from Gears of War developer Epic, a company which also makes the popular Unreal Engine. A recent job posting is looking for a “Technical Artist” to work on “multiple new and existing IP’s across multiple platforms”. The job ad goes on, hinting at next gen hardware:

“Your goal will be to attack the more complex issues that arise when we push the technology envelope, both in production on current hardware, and prototyping for next-generation hardware”

This could also be a possible indication of Unreal Engine 3. As for next-gen consoles, Nintendo will be releasing the Wii U this year, while Microsoft and Sony are reportedly already hard at work on the next gen systems, which should see release in 2013 or 2014.

There are petitions these days trying to get developer From Software to port Dark Souls to the PC. The petitions have garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures, but it’s still unlikely we’ll ever see Dark Souls on PC. Why? Because PC is a platform with 90% piracy rate.

The majority of PC gamers will never pay for their games, no matter how many Steam sales Valve has, no matter how much the game are marked down, no matter how easy and convenient and DRM-free it is: it’ll never be better than free. Last year, a whopping 4 million PC gamers pirated Crysis 2. When time comes for Crysis 3, which platform do you think developer Crytek will focus on? PC or consoles? Even Portal 2, which is made by Valve, a company with a God-like status among gamers, was pirated more than 3 million times on the PC.

“If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it. Doesn’t matter if its a physical copy, or a digital copy — the developer won’t get paid for their work.”Developers like Valve can afford to put out great and expensive PC titles: they have an established fan base who are going to buy the game no matter what. But when it comes to small developers, and especially first time developers, it’s a very different story, as Bohemia Interactive showed last year with the release of ArmA 2: for every 3 people who bought the game, 100 pirated it. The head of Bohemia said the statistic was “really worrying for us as a mid-sized, independent, PC-oriented developer”.

Politically correct PC gamers insist that services like Steam and lower prices are the solution to game piracy, but Steam has been around for a few years now, as have other digital distribution systems. Has PC gaming piracy gone down? Not at all. Granted, publishers share some of the blame: restrictive DRM solutions have certainly driven away some legitimate gamers. But before you start praising “non-DRM” solutions, know that there are no true “non-DRM” services. Steam is a DRM service. If you don’t believe that, try and give one of you Steam games to a friend. Try and sell the game that you bought and rightfully own — oh, you can’t. That’s because you don’t own the games in your Steam library, technically you pay for a “subscription” to them.

With those kinds of numbers, why should From Software make Dark Souls for the PC platform? If 9 out of 10 gamers will pirate the game, that’s not a good business proposition. And when multiplatform titles do get a PC release, it’s usually in the form of a bad console port. That’s where the hypocrisy lies: elitist PC gamers complain about bad ports and developers not caring enough about the PC platform. But then they pirate the game anyway. At least 9 out 10 times. The tired old excuse that “online piracy isn’t theft, because it’s just a copy” is bullshit. If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it. Doesn’t matter if its a physical copy, or a digital copy — the developer won’t get paid for their work.

“If I was a developer, would I spend my resources developing for a platform with 10% piracy rate, or 90% piracy rate?”For the record, I don’t own a console. I’m a PC gamer. And all but one (Battlefield 3) of my 40+ games were bought on Steam. But unlike many other legitimate PC gamers, I don’t complain when a developer decides not to release a PC version. Or when they decide to spend most of their resources on the console versions. Nor I don’t complain about bad PC ports that are released years later. I understand their reasons. If I was a developer, would I spend my resources developing for a platform with 10% piracy rate, or 90% piracy rate?

Face it, we PC gamers don’t deserve any more exclusive titles. We don’t deserve proper PC versions or ports. We don’t deserve a truly non-DRM system. By pirating 9 out of 10 games, we have’t earned the right to any of those things.

Sincerely,
A PC gamer.

According to a new report coming from Chiphell, which has a decent track record when it comes to GPU leaks, Nvidia has decided to launch the next generation GPU, GTX 680, earlier than expected. The original launch was slated for March/April, but due to AMD’s slight lead, Nvidia decided to release the card in late-February.

The GTX 680 is said to offer the same performance as AMD’s 7970 card, and will ship with 2 GB of RAM and a clock speed of 780 MHz. The GTX 680 will reportedly be followed by the GTX 700-series later this year.