From what we know at Wikipedia, only four franchises had sold more (Mario, Pokémon, Tetris and The Sims). Tony Hawk sold around 30 millions, Medal of Honor around 31 million, and Call of Duty 35 million. That would mean NFS sold more than those three franchises combined.

While people claim Wikipedia isn't reliable, this particular article is because we are referencing sales given by journalists, gaming sites or the companies themselves. As reliable as this claim of 100 million, at least!

This is the future. I don't like it, but I recognize the future when I see it, just like I recognized the importance of the Wii as soon as the controller was revealed.

Capcom was reluctant, however, to compare the sales of the fourth instalment to its predecessors.
Well, it is easy, just go to their list of platinum games:

• Devil May Cry 4 (PS3, Xbox 360), 2.35m

• Devil May Cry (PS2), 2.16m
• Devil May Cry 2 (PS2), 1.7m
• Devil May Cry 3 (PS2), 1.3m

Although data is missing (there are like 3m units missing!), you can easily see DMC2 is the best selling single platform game.

The gaming industry is where the movie and the music industries were 30 years ago. They complain that resale is killing their industry. VHS anyone? If people don't want to buy your game new, maybe you should wonder why they prefer not having the original and instead a second hand copy.

The problem with pricing is simple: games are expensive considering the market they are targeting (12-18 years old can't spend USD 60 twice per month apparently).

As a Wikipedia administrator who worked in gaming articles for quite a long time, I am saddened by this article. Not because it is inaccurate, but because there is some true. I personally play MUDs still (and even polished its article, as much as I could do), and indeed, there is a lack of documentation about that era.

Nowadays I try to keep (along with several others) the list of best-selling video games and the list of best-selling video game franchises up to date. And while information about new games is easily found, information about old games is pretty different. Finding reliable sources is extremely hard for such old games that we need to "bend" rules to accept certain references that may not be very reliable.

What 4thVariety says is true as well: there are so many lost films, masterpieces that have been lost because of, for example, studios destroyed them to make storage room for new movies. The gaming industry is very young, and forgetting to record information is still happening (how many times we have heard that certain developers cannot port certain games because they have lost the source code?). Or in the case of Okami, the source code was incomplete until someone in Japan discovered a hard drive with the missing resources?

As a wikipedian, though, I feel Wikipedia is being misjudged here too. The policies and guidelines exist to give it a certain scope, otherwise people could create articles about their family members, games they have written, or restaurants they have visited. These rules (some of which are unfair, I agree, but that is another discussion) tend to favor "visibility" instead of importance. For example, someone participating in an American Idol reality has its own article, because it is covered by the media, making it notable by our own definition. However, something important like the discovery of a new drug that heals cancer won't be accepted until it is covered by reliable media. We are slaves of what the reliable sources do or don't. If they prefer covering Britney Spears instead of the first MUD ever created, it is not our fault.

Personal experience: the list of best-selling video game franchises currently have a threshold of 5 million units. Any series selling more than that and referenced with a reliable source can be added. Some companies like Ubisoft and Capcom boast list of series sales, which we can use. However others like don't do. For example, how about the Tiger Woods franchise? It surely sold more than 5 million, but the media never covered nor Electronic Arts published that information. Or Smash Bros, the last game of the franchise sold more than 5 million alone, but we have never heard Nintendo or any other media claiming how much they have sold. So, it is missing from the list (and from time to time we are asked why we don't add it). The example that hurts the most is Pac-Man. Only the Atari version sold more than 5 million units, but it is virtually impossible to obtain even an approximate number, much less in a reliable media. Namco pumps the fact that it was played a couple of billion times, but other than that, no sales number. In ten years, people will search for the history of video games, which games have sold the most, and will be missing one of the most important games ever created.

Regardless of missing entries, we are pretty proud that both lists are usually mentioned or used as source in articles from gaming sites to newspapers. And ends up giving the reason to the Edge Staff in that we are usually the first place to look for that information.