5 Most popular First Person Shooters of all time

Volume of sales as a metric of popularity? I'd call that a metric of financial success.

I'd say popularity is tied to longevity of player population, in which case I'd say Team Fortress 2 or Counter-strike 1.x-Source beats them all.
 
Armenius said:
I'd say popularity is tied to longevity of player population, in which case I'd say Team Fortress 2 or Counter-strike 1.x-Source beats them all.
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Or total player hours as a ratio of time the game's been available, maybe.
 
Ya, sales does not mean most popular, considering in North America you can not return a game once opened in most places......

Also they should do different types.. BF and CoD could be bought over the internet, online, anywhere in the world... golden eye for example not likely purchased as easily..
 
Too bad we can't find a stat of actual individuals purchasing a game aka not mommy buying you CoD. I bet the sales figures would be slashed in half for the CoD series :p
 
goldeneye got 5th?

it was was got most regular people in to fps games.

it was good and on a console something that everyone had access to.
 
I would have expected Quake, Doom or Half Life would get a mention in that article because those games really defined what FPS games are. Call Of Duty? Right... I blame that series for ruining the FPS genre.
 
Call of duty sells so many copies because it's an easy pick up and play game. Plus, they release a new one every year at least, at which point no one plays last years. How many people are still playing modern warfare 2, 3, black ops, black ops 2, etc... It's like the next release of Madden every year. COD games are for kids, with the exception of the first modern warfare (the last decent COD title).

Where as with CS, you buy one copy, and play it for 15 years lol. I own like 8 COD titles and have far less time in all of those combined than in CS.

All in all, this a terrible metric.
 
ChronoDetector said:
I would have expected Quake, Doom or Half Life would get a mention in that article because those games really defined what FPS games are. Call Of Duty? Right... I blame that series for ruining the FPS genre.
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I have never understood why GoldenEye 007 always gets mentioned in top FPS games list. Yes, it was a breakthrough for console platform- but that's about it. It didn't bring anything new to the FPS genre in 1997.

But I have a anti-console bias. The last console I owned was the SuperNES in 1991, and that was only because of Super Star Wars and Wing Commander.
 
ChronoDetector said:
I would have expected Quake, Doom or Half Life would get a mention in that article because those games really defined what FPS games are. Call Of Duty? Right... I blame that series for ruining the FPS genre.
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The fact that not one of those games is mentioned shows how bogus the list is. Not one of the games on it deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the classics.
 
michael.pa2 said:
The fact that not one of those games is mentioned shows how bogus the list is. Not one of the games on it deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the classics.
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Did you read the article? It is measuring shooters by copies sold. Doom doesn't hold a candle to Call of Duty sales. Newer games also have a massive advantage in that gaming is much more commonplace now than it was in the 90s.

I don't think the list includes digital copies, at least for some games. Remember in the early 2000s "number sold" lists didn't typically include digital sales. As digital sales have become much more common, publishers started including them in their sales numbers. I do wonder if this negatively affects titles such as Half Life 2.

Looks like Black Ops is the 2nd best selling game in history, right behind GTA5. And GTA5 has yet to come out for PC and those console gamers who were holding out for current gen versions. But I am sure plenty of people will buy a 2nd copy for the new consoles/PC to.
 
From what I've heard Half-Life 2 sold over 12 million copies. Steam and many other digital stores don't release their numbers. It seems like the article kind of ignores PC games altogether anyways.
 
I wouldn't give much credit to these lists these sites blurp out. Their goal is not to inform, but to entertain, and by entertain I mean reinforce COD fanatics that COD is the shit, and old-school gamers who mention HL, Quake, Doom are loosers.
 
I don't like using sales data for 2 reasons.

  • As time goes on games will sell more as the population of gamers increases. Does that mean a game is "more popular"?
  • Modern games in general are designed for a much broader base in order to increase sales.
 
M76 said:
I wouldn't give much credit to these lists these sites blurp out. Their goal is not to inform, but to entertain, and by entertain I mean reinforce COD fanatics that COD is the shit, and old-school gamers who mention HL, Quake, Doom are loosers.
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Kinda like Buzzfeed. A lot of these list sites are done as a modern magazine / gossip column / click bait. They spit out lists because they can rack up the amount of page-views quickly, which in-turn raises their ad revenue.

A team of writers can probably pump out a months worth in a couple hours.
 
Star seige tribes! No game has even come close to the gameplay that game offered
 
As much as I loved playing Bond back in the day, I don't believe for a second that neither Half-life outsold GoldenEye.
 
If they had a way to accurately track the numbers, I bet Doom would've shown up on this list. Think about it, that game outsold WINDOWS at the time.
 
tribes 2, will always be the best first person shooter every.
 
Youn said:
If they had a way to accurately track the numbers, I bet Doom would've shown up on this list. Think about it, that game outsold WINDOWS at the time.
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True. And it also was ported over to numerous consoles. Not to mention the god knows how many mods.
 
how could Doom not be on that list? I'm sorry, it is on every device imaginable and still supported to this day.
 
bigdogchris said:
I don't like using sales data for 2 reasons.

  • As time goes on games will sell more as the population of gamers increases. Does that mean a game is "more popular"?
  • Modern games in general are designed for a much broader base in order to increase sales.
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Agreed. The marketing on Portal 2 was in the millions. They probably spent a lot more on that than they did on Half Life 2.

griff30 said:
Half Life 3 will beat them ALL.
Waiting........
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Doubt it. The last installment was over a decade ago. I am still interested, but not nearly as interested as I was in 2006-8. No doubt it will sell very well and bring in a lot of new fans, but I don't see it beating CoD.
 
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