LogFAQs > #985805007

Since I'm the kind of person who still goes to a GameFAQS Contest board, I occasionally spend my time looking into stuff like sales numbers for older game consoles, what the region breakdowns are, and what sources the numbers come from. I was looking at the numbers for PS1 games last night, when I came across something curious.

Now, for as long as I can remember, lists of the best selling PS1 games always include the console's adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (Sorcerer's) Stone in the Top 10, and the amount sold is 8 million, a number which appears consistent across all sources and lists. For decades, I've seen people go "Wow, that game sold that much when the PS2 was already out. That's crazy. But it is Harry Potter, I guess." But is this number... a lie?

If you look at any tranche of leaked PS1 NPD data there is an American sales number provided for the game: 1.1 million. (See here: https://web.archive.org/web/20070421003854/http://www.the-magicbox.com/Chart-USPlatinum.shtml) Assuming that the game sold a couple hundred thousand in Japan/the rest of the world, that leaves over 6 million copies that must be sold in Europe to make up the difference, 50% more than Gran Turismo, and by far the best selling game in the region. I'm sorry, but for a game that only sold 1.1 million in America, that's hard to believe. Yes, I know Harry Potter was probably disproportionately popular in Europe, but selling six times as much as the US? The math ain't mathin.'

While looking into this, I came across this Reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/psx/comments/1in9pmx/the_top_10_bestselling_playstation_1_games_of_all/), where someone mentions the game was bundled with PS1s in PAL regions at one point. That might explain some of it, but the 8 million figure was being quoted as early as 2003 (https://web.archive.org/web/20060221044930/http://www.ownt.com/qtakes/2003/gamestats/gamestats.shtm), and unless it was bundled with every PS1 sold in Europe from spring 2002 onwards, I don't see how it gets to those numbers. I struggle to come to any other conclusion than the claim that this is one of the 10 best selling PS1 games is wrong. Maybe all versions of the game (it was also released on handhelds and PC), got listed together in a press release, and over time this number got incorrectly attached to just the PS1 version.

I know that this is a very "Who cares?" kind of situation, since the game was clearly somewhat popular regardless, but it's kind of crazy to me that all lists of the best selling PS1 games for the past 20 years have included what appears to be completely false information.