Best Selling Fighting Games of All Time

[rainless]

It would be foolish to underestimate Nintendo's impact on pop culture and casual gaming. The mere word "Nintendo" has a resonance not entirely unlike "McDonalds" or "Coca-Cola." This is no mean feat... I still think of "Stereo System" and "Windows" when I think of the words "Sony" and "Microsoft" respectively. This is why Nintendo is still around and still in the hardware business so many years after most of their original competition (Sega and Atari) have faded.

THAT said... I do not consider Smash Brothers to be an actual fighting game. No more so than I would consider Mike Tyson's Punchout or Mario Kart, or that arm wrestling game they used to have in the arcades or GAUNTLET to be fighting games. It's still impressive what a RIDICULOUS amount of copies they've sold... But we aren't talking about a two Michelin Star restaurant here... we're talking about McDonald's. Which makes Tekken the No. 1 real best selling fighting game franchise of all time... which surprises the hell out of me.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Best_selling_fighting_games

Software sales

GAMES

Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 13.21 million[1]
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS - 8.81 million[1]
Tekken 3 - 8.5 million [2]
Super Smash Bros. Melee - 8.12 million[1]
Street Fighter II: The World Warriors - 6.3 million[3]
Super Smash Bros. - 5.55 million[1]
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U - 5.24 million[1]
Mortal Kombat X - 5 million
Street Fighter II Turbo - 4.1 million[3]
Mortal Kombat (2011) - ~4 million

FRANCHISES

Tekken - 46 million[4][5]
Super Smash Bros.- 40 million
Street Fighter - 40 million [6]
Mortal Kombat - 37 million
Soulcalibur - 12 million

 

[Janus67]

Out of curiosity, any reason you don't consider SSB to be a fighting game? I mean I realize it isn't necessarily one in the traditional sense, but the game is played at EVO every year (the worlds biggest fighting game tournament), granted with relatively specific rules that removes items and such.

That said, I am incredibly surprised that Tekken would have the most sales. I would have surely thought it would be street fighter.

 

[rainless]

Out of curiosity, any reason you don't consider SSB to be a fighting game?

Well...

I mean I realize it isn't necessarily one in the traditional sense

...THAT.

It isn't a traditional fighting game. They play all kinds of crazy stuff at EVO. Like that weird dropkick game a couple of years back.

And I'm as big a Tekken fan as anyone but I had no IDEA Tekken 3 sold that much. I also didn't realize Street Fighter IV performed so poorly. I could've sworn they sold like 10 million copies of SFIV... guess not.

I didn't get to play the Playstation versions of Tekken until the PS3s PS1 backwards compatibility. I never owned the original Playstation. Just the PS2, 3, and 4. So I was unaware that Tekken 3 was such a big deal. By the time it was out arcades had sort of died-out in Chicago, so there was no way of gauging how popular Tekken 3 was. I can tell you that none of the first two Tekken games were anywhere CLOSE to the popularity of any Capcom game in Chicago. Be it SFII, X-Men, Marvel Superheroes, X-Men vs Street Fighter... Etc.

Huge lines for the Capcom games, but you could play Tekken all day by yourself if you wanted. I suppose that all changed when the Playstation came out. I didn't have one...so I didn't know.

 

[BugFreak]

Tekken surprises me as well. I honestly would think the Mortal Kombat franchise would be the most as old as it is and still going.

The amount of quarters I sank into that game could be considered disgraceful and I'm not even counting the amount of hours I put into MK3 on the Super Nintendo.

 

[rainless]

Tekken surprises me as well. I honestly would think the Mortal Kombat franchise would be the most as old as it is and still going.

The amount of quarters I sank into that game could be considered disgraceful and I'm not even counting the amount of hours I put into MK3 on the Super Nintendo.

EXACTLY... I mean... I'm still scratching my head about Tekken 3... I think everybody owned a copy of Tekken 2. I got one... even though I didn't have a Playstation to play it on. But I would've thought even MKII sold more than Tekken 3. Who the hell bought all those copies?

 

[benbaked]

SSB is a fighting game about as much as Urban Champion is. Okay, it's a little bit deeper than Urban Champion.

 

[Time-Bandit]

Not surprised personally I prefer Tekken over street fighter but consider both great titles. I know over here in New Zealand, Tekken 3 was a big thing almost every kid had it and at that time was like the best fighting game you could get on a Playstation. Friends were constantly arguing at school about who was better at the game and who was the best character to play then you had Eddie Gordo who was everyones go to character for cheap repeatable damage to win fights lol.