The Best-Selling PlayStation Games are Mostly Call of Duty

By Bee Wertheimer  |  September 10, 2025 | 3:16pm
Video Games News PlayStation
The Best-Selling PlayStation Games are Mostly Call of Duty

Happy Birthday, PlayStation! Yesterday marks 30 years of the console line, with the first North America release dating back to September 9, 1995. To celebrate, Circana has published a list of the best-selling PlayStation games of all time in the US.

So, literally half of the list is Call of Duty. To be exact, the CoD franchise makes up 11 of the 20 best-selling titles by dollars, and 9 of the 20 best-sellers by unit, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) leading the pack.

It’s a good thing, then, that following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard two years ago, Sony agreed to a 10-year deal with Microsoft to keep the Call of Duty games on PlayStation following a long battle between the corporations. CoD is the second best-selling video game franchise of all time, having pushed over 500 million units in sales, so it isn’t exactly shocking that the series is decimating the charts. I can’t help but wonder what the statistically average player is missing out on, like my cousin who’s only ever played GTA 5. There’s so much more out there, sweet gamers. Hop on Silksong.

(Also, for anyone who cares, Microsoft and Paramount are currently making a Call of Duty movie. Totally unrelated fun fact: increased military recruitment is a recession indicator.)

Back to the (now more expensive) PlayStation—games published by Sony themselves make up a pretty small chunk of the best-sellers list. This includes several installments of Marvel’s Spider-Man, God of War (2018), and, of course, The Last of Us.

Other notable non-Sony best-selling titles of all time include Minecraft, Red Dead Redemption 2, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. At the very top of the list is GTA 5.

Since the release of the first ever PlayStation, total sales for the console series have surpassed 500 million, and the PlayStation 2 holds the crown for the best-selling console of all time. Let’s celebrate by playing literally anything other than Call of Duty.

 
Join the discussion...