The PS3 just celebrated the 10th anniversary of its massively overpriced launch on November 11th, 2006 in Japan, followed by North America on November 17th. To celebrate, the popular Japanese magazine Weekly Famitsu launched a survey among its readers asking about their favorite PS3 game of all time.
The results were quite interesting, and in part surprising. You can see the full top 30 below, with the number of votes for each game (for a total of 3,879 valid votes).
- Demon's Souls (288)
- The Last of Us (241)
- Dark Souls (216)
- Final Fantasy XIII (201)
- Metal gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (200)
- NieR (197)
- Valkyria Chronicles (186)
- Tales of Vesperia (181)
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (170)
- Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (168)
- MAG (160)
- Grand Theft Auto V (155)
- Resonance of Fate (146)
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs. Full Boost (138)
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (131)
- Call of Duty: Black Ops II (120)
- Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (114)
- Joruney (108)
- Yakuza 5 (99)
- Mainichi Issho (89)
- Yakuza 4 (82)
- Lost Planet (76)
- Persona 5 (74)
- Heavy Rain (62)
- Battlefield 3 (58)
- Gran Turismo 6 (57)
- Tales of Xillia 2 (52)
- Assassin's Creed 2 (45)
- Diablo III (39)
- Resident Evil 5 (26)
Demon's Souls is at the top of the list proving once more that the first of the series cannot be forgotten. Personally, I also liked it more than the Dark Souls series, so I'm not too surprised. That said, the first Dark Souls comes in third, letting From Software deliver one of its ruthless one-two punches.
Between the two is The Last of Us, which actually left the Uncharted series quite a lot behind, and it's the most popular among western games. Final Fantasy XIII retains its position as a quite popular game, despite its polarizing nature, beating Metal Gear Solid 4 to the 4th place.
Cult classics also have their place close to the top, with NieR followed by Valkyria Chronicles (which would be my personal number one).
Surprisingly, MAG finds a place just under the top ten, beating the best seller Grand Theft Auto V, which proved to be very successful in Japan, at least commercially.
The Yakuza series actually appears quite low in the list, but it shouldn't surprise, as it appeals to a very mature demographic that probably doesn't represent the majority of Famitsu readers. Gran Turismo 6 also doesn't appear until position 26th. After all, the series' prime was closer to the PS2 era.
Another apparently surprising result is Persona 5, which ranked 23rd, but this isn't really too shocking: it's hard to approach this kind of survey without being swayed by perception, and it's difficult to perceive Persona 5 as an old classic from a generation past. After all, it was released just two months ago. On top of that, most probably perceive it as a PS4 game.