At 170 million units sold, it didn't look like Tetris was ever going to get dethroned as the grand champion of video game sales, but alas, it has been done.
Full disclosure: This did NOT just happen. It was several months ago by many estimations and to be fair it is not an exact science and the end result doesn't even matter anyway. It's just a list and now Minecraft is on the top of it.
If you look at any professional publication there is always a tinge of doubt or at least uncertainty when claiming that MC is now number one... normally they say something like "Minecraft MAY have surpassed Tetris...."
The reason behind this is that Tetris has been released so many different times under different licenses and companies and various platforms that it would be immensely complicated to compile all that data. Plus, are we counting the endless array of Minecraft add-ons in the sales figures? It's all too complicated and in the end it doesn't really matter.
There are rumblings on places like reddit suggesting that if we were to compile ALL formats that Tetris has ever been sold under, that their actual sales figures are something like 430+ million units. I have no idea where this data comes from and in the end I don't really care.
Based on some people's figures, and they don't really provide any sort of link or reference to how it is that they are coming up with these numbers, Tetris is still well beyond Minecraft in sales. The thing that gets me about this chart that is often referenced is that the link that it claims as a source actually has Minecraft in the number one spot. Then at the same source it briefly states "some figures have Tetris in the 425 million range." Plus, the source is Wikipedia and that can be edited by anyone who wants to do so.
Whatever! At the end of the day the sales figures for both of these titles is insane and a massive success story for sure. I am old enough to remember the addiction we all had to the Game Boy version of Tetris and how that song that never changed is stuck in my head anytime i choose to think about it.
I have also never played Minecraft, not even for a minute.