'Mortal Kombat X' Is the Best-Selling Game of 2015 So Far

Scorpion from 'Mortal Kombat X,' via Xbox

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Pause a moment to consider what the biggest video games of right now are. Not games that have come out this year, necessarily; but ones that people are playing the most, talking about, loving. There's Grand Theft Auto V, of course, still—and rightly so, because that game's amazing. Batman: Arkham Knight's been everywhere, partly because it's incredible in places and partly because its PC version was such a broken mess. And then there's Minecraft. I think there will always be Minecraft.

So the best-selling game of 2015 so far, across all formats, might come as a surprise to you—I know it has me. Fortune reports that it's the gory fighter Mortal Kombat X that leads the sales chart with almost seven full months of the year behind us. It's a good game, definitely, a much-improved iteration of the long-running series that right now does offer more than raw bloody thrills. But I had assumed, wrongly, that Mortal Kombat X's audience was core fighting fans, rather than a more casual crowd. The sales say otherwise.

Mortal Kombat X came out in April, which has given it a few months to tick over at the tills. Perhaps the most impressively performing game in the global top ten, then, is Arkham Knight, which despite being restricted (essentially) to console sales only, and having just come out at the end of June, is placed at six. Factor in the fact that this chart is based on sales up to the end of June, discounting July's numbers, and that's even more amazing. Celebrate by watching this Batmobile fail.

Personally, it's great to see The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt doing so well, too. It's my game of the year, by which I mean I'm going to be playing it right through to Christmas. Super Smash Bros. is the only Nintendo title to feature, but shout out to the Wii U-exclusive Splatoon for selling a million copies already.

Here's the top ten best-selling video games of 2015 so far in full:

1 Mortal Kombat X
2 Grand Theft Auto V
3 Battlefield Hardline
4 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
5 Minecraft
6 Batman: Arkham Knight
7 Dying Light
8 NBA 2K15
9 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
10 Super Smash Bros.

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