Most popular game?

[Vlad Antlerkov]

RTS: No opinion here.

TBS: Civilization series, excluding CTP and SMAC.

FPS: Ever? Doom, no contest. (IIRC, around 40 million people have the shareware version; the game's sold a few million at retail.) Right now? Half-Life.

RPG: Diablo II.

FWIW, Final Fantasy has been around since 1987, when FFI was released in Japan.

[Grumbold]

You'd be right that console games sell more these days (and probably have for most of a decade)

The Sims has to be the bestseller on the PC even if you take the original game alone.

NWN is reputedly selling a LOT of units in its first month, but that will have to continue for it to break any records. It should stomp that lame RTS Diablo into the ground though

[Apocalypse]

I just remember, Gettysburg! is the most popular Civil War game.

I don't know if NWN will beat Diablo. It has sold in the millions while many are disappointed with NWN.

[FrustratedPoet]

Many were disappointed with Diablo 2 too.

/me stills hears the cries of "Diablo 2 is not an RPG" in his sleep.
(it IS!! ... /me looks at Grumbold ... j/k)

That didn't make much of a difference to it's sales.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Solver
Osweld - I do not think CS is a first-person shooter. FPS games are Doom, Quake, Unreal, but not CS... it's more about teamwork.

Yeah, and civ isn't really a strategy game... it's more about empire building.

[Kassiopeia]

FF8 sold more then FF7? Actually, that's not much of a surprise since I bought a new copy, but the first disc was so ****ed up that I had to purchase a used one from a friend to get past Disc One... I sold a working Disc Three to another friend, and almost covered my loss from that earlier purchase, though.

And yes, our household has a copy of The Sims...

[JohnIII]

I think we must be really weird over here. Every Christmas, when a new Championship Manager update comes out, people flock to buy this game which, frankly, looks crap and isn't very accessible.

But I LOOOOOOVE IT!

[Spaced Cowboy]

So does the most popular game mean the best selling? I know that I've bought games that I wish I could take back.

[Lemmy]

You'd be right that console games sell more these days (and probably have for most of a decade)

that doesn't mean they are more played also, playing pirated games is a lot easier on a pc than on a console.

[Solver]

What he says.

[Apocalypse]

Well, it is safe to assume that many people satisfied with The Sims considering all the expansion packs.

[SnowFire]

Yeah, but just how many people pirate games? If 10,000 people pirate your average game, that's a pretty horrific rate as far as I'm concerned, and even that isn't going to put much of a dent in the sales difference. Besides, if you're talking about playing, many people who pirate games don't play them the tons that people who legitimately buy them do. Again, at absolute worst, maybe there's an additional 20% of people playing a pirated game. That isn't going to stop the console's massive 2:1 advantage.

As for best selling = most popular, well, it's about the best we have to go on. Sure, not everybody who buys a game likes it, but this goes for all games. A 30% dissatisfaction rate compared to a 15% dissatisfaction rate isn't going to mean much.

[Apocalypse]

Don't forget there are more PC games than console games. People are also more likely to have a larger console game collection than PC game collection since console games are drastically shorter on average.

Fun NIM related trivia: What game has the highest return rate of all time?

[dunk]

Originally posted by Solver
Ohh, are those really PC games? I'm so happy that, by the time Civ 4 is released, we're probably going to have a second generation of civ players.

Ultima and Wizardry are PC games.

I didn't know we were limited to just PC games.

[JohnIII]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
Don't forget there are more PC games than console games. People are also more likely to have a larger console game collection than PC game collection since console games are drastically shorter on average.

Drastically shorter? Well, that depends on what you want in a game, doesn't it? Console games tend to have higher replayability for unlocking stuff, which is almost unheard of in PC games.