2009 – Halo Wars – 2 Million Copies
The year when Hearts of Iron III and Empire: Total War hit shelves was dominated by the first true real-time strategy game made for the console: Halo Wars. The late 2000s were dominated by first-person shooters: Call of Duty, Battlefield and Halo (and Killzone, for a while) duked it out annually for domination, so it would only make sense to capitalize on this fervour and expand the Halo Universe to other genres: Released during the years of the Halo craze, and at the same time of Halo 3: ODST, Halo Wars was set-up to be a successful title from day one. Now, looking back at this real-time strategy game, it’s a simplistic adaptation of Halo that suffers from being developed with a controller in mind, so no micro, no free base set-up, and very simple combat were necessary concessions to adapt the genre to a limited control scheme. With 2 million copies sold while being a console exclusive makes Halo Wars track record sort of impressive.
2010 – Starcraft 2 – 6 Million Copies
There’s very little to say about the year 2010 other than it was the stage for the release of Starcraft 2, arguably the best real-time strategy ever made, and some even say it was one of the greatest games to ever grace our screens. I would agree with one thing: it’s singleplayer campaign is absolutely stellar. The game was met with critical acclaim by the industry and commercial success by its audience, and across its lifetime it sold over 6 million copies, making it one of the most successful real-time strategy games.
2011 – Civilization V – 8 Million Copies
Enter Civilization, and enter this year’s winner. If you need any more proof of how successful the Civilization franchise is, try and remember that in 2011 a lot of the Civilization community wasn’t very happy with the state of Civilization V: its cartoony graphics and poor AI were lambasted by a lot of consumers and game reviewers, and yet, the game went on to sell over 8 million copies! That’s Starcraft 2 and Halo Wars, the winners from the last two years put together.
2012 – Crusader Kings II – 5 Million Copies
No other entry surprised me as much as this one. I knew that Crusader Kings II was a massive success, and if you read some older articles on this website, you’ll find out that I’m one of the people who love this game and its success. What I wasn’t expecting was the fact that the game sold 5 million copies! It’s 1.5 million more copies than Spore! FTL: Faster Than Light, the indie darling of the early 2010’s is in second place, with a massive 3 million copies sold. And XCOM: Enemy Unknown (the best strategy game ever made in my humble opinion) came third, having sold 2.5 million. The mobile version of XCOM is reported to have been a massive success, but I couldn’t find any numbers, it would be interesting to see those.
2013 – Company of Heroes 2 – 8 Million Copies
To say that Company of Heroes 2 was a massive hit is quite an understatement. The World War 2 RTS had a rough launch and it was marred in controversies due to its depiction of Soviet troops, to the point where it was even banned from being sold in Russia. However, the decade-long support kept the game alive for so long that it developed a healthy multiplayer community, several expansion packs and DLCs were released, and the game is still very much alive in 2024 as it was in 2013. Even more so than Company of Heroes 3, a game that sold less than 1/10 of Company of Heroes 2.
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