Minecraft Has Now Sold Over 25 Million Copies on PC and Mac (neowin.net)

An anonymous reader shares a Neowin article: Minecraft is a 3D video game created by Markus Persson, and published on PC by Mojang back in 2011. Ever since its release, it's been very popular and has become a global phenomenon. Received positively by reviewers and consumers alike, it has been a commercial success. In fact, its continuing popularity prompted Microsoft to buy Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014. It so happens that the game has sold over 25 million copies on PC and Mac to-date. According to the latest statistics publicly available on Mojang's website, Minecraft has sold 25,072,545 copies on PC and Mac.

Comments

MS Nutty aquisitions

[avandesande]

at 2.5billion that's 100$ per copy of minecraft sold

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[sunking2]

Add in consoles, cell phones, extra skins and other dlc. And then merchandising. They are cleaning house with that acquisition. Not to mention they bought it oversees so paid for it with money that they couldn't bring back to shareholders without being taxed anyway. Whoever landed that deal deserved every stock option they gave him.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[rwven]

That only counts PC and Mac. There have been loads of copies sold on xbox 360, xb1, ps3, ps4, psp, ds, phones, and every other conceivable platform...

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt it, consider many (most?) of those purchases happened before the Microsoft acquisition. I suspect personally that they bought the game after peak Minecraft, to make their money back I think they will have follow the Lego model and ship licensed IP like Star Wars.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Luthair]

Shutters? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[known_coward_69]

$7 a month to have your realm on pocket edition which is a huge PITA to connect to the vanilla java server. It's like $25 for the xbox and PS4 versions where they sell you lots of skins and other stuff. same on pocket edition

my kid told me everyone in his class only plays on pocket edition which is a shame since it's so crippled to make MS more money

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Luthair]

Minecraft is digital Lego, which Lego had to license to make physical copies of? My head hurts...

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[PPalmgren]

They're making their money back in other ways. Minecraft has become one of the go-to games for kids. It turned the XBox into a more kid-friendly console, a market Nintendo historically had in their back pocket. Parents aren't as intimidated buying their children XBoxes when its bundled with Minecraft as the console draw rather than Halo. They also haven't had to release significant iterations of the game to maintain freshness on new releases like Mario. Little work with a trickle reward that'll pay off more the longer its present. I suspect children today look at Minecraft the same way we looked at Mario in the 90's.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[chispito]

at 2.5billion that's 100$ per copy of minecraft sold

There's a massive install base on consoles and mobile devices, they rent servers to people at a very lucrative price point, there's a crap ton of merchandising and don't forget the planned 2019 feature film.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[chispito]

Minecraft is digital Lego, which Lego had to license to make physical copies of? My head hurts...

Everybody wins. Minecraft sells Lego sells Minecraft ad infinitum.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Whorhay]

From a brief google search it looks like since august of 2014 they've sold about 8 million more copies on PC alone. So yes, a majority of the sales were made before the Microsoft acquisition. That said they've still sold a very significant number of copies since then, and it isn't like the profits from each sale prior to that were extracted immediately as dividends or whatever. And I see more and more Minecraft merchandise for sale all the time, that is an IP that is going to be paying dividends with minimal input for another decade or two.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[chrysrobyn]

And then merchandising.

Each of my three kids has a Minecraft Creeper hoodie, my 10 year old has a half dozen books, my 13 year old has a bunch of paper models, there are at least two battery powered "torches" wandering around, and both of my older kids have a bunch of small plastic models.

We're in for two copies of Minecraft for Mac, another one for Xbox 360 and WiiU. If we've handed over less than $200 all total, I'd be surprised.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Anonymous Coward]

I played Mario when I was young and I played Minecraft. Actually I have played thousands of hours both. Minecraft is far superior, but not because of Mojang and only because it is written in Java. Here are reasons why Minecraft is so good:
- It is multiplayer
- It is a sandbox game, giving you a lot of freedom.
- It is educational game. it teaches you that iron is mined under ground and sand is used to make glass. You can also learn math with it. My kids already know that half a stack is 32 items.
- It is not a violent game, sort of.
- Other games are just so bad that this one stands out. Sure there are fun and good games, but you usually get bored with them within a week.
- It has 3rd party hosted servers where you can play castle siege, hide&seek, paintball war, CS, etc. (created by 3rd party groups). These give you weeks of extra "oh, new game" time.
- It has mods and modpacks, Mojang has not helped (much) creating these, but because the game is written in Java, it was possible for others to make these. These mods add huge value to the game, In normal game you have shovel and sword, cats and dogs. With mods you got magic and machines, giraffes and dinosaurs and a lot of other new stuff like gas explosions and metallurgy. These give you months of "oh, I wonder what this does" time with the game. After playing several mod packs, I have to say that the original game is really boring, even I liked when I first played with it. THIS IS THE MAIN REASON WHY MINECRAFT IS SO GOOD.
- It is multiplatform (Again, this was easy because it is written in Java)

For those who have Minecraft and they have not tried modpacks, I recommend you to install AT launcher: https://www.atlauncher.com/ and trying skyfactory 2. If you are anything like me, after playing the Skyfactory, you will understand why these modpacks are what makes Minecraft a good game. Those who are new to minecraft, I recommend you to play the normal game until you get bored before moving to modpacks, because the learning curve would be way too big.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[irrational_design]

But the Nintendo Wii U has minecraft, you don't need an xbox for the kids to play it on the console.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Schnapple]

That only counts PC and Mac. There have been loads of copies sold on xbox 360, xb1, ps3, ps4, psp, ds, phones, and every other conceivable platform...

Actually it's never launched on Nintendo DS or 3DS. Every other platform you listed though is accurate, as well as the Raspberry Pi.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Luthair]

extracted immediately as dividends or whatever

It was privately held, its pretty unlikely they would have had significant cash reserves when they transfer the company.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Fieryphoenix]

Wait... isn't it child abuse to buy a Wii U in 2017?

Re: MS Nutty aquisitions

[bill_mcgonigle]

The GP poster doesn't see much in the way of children.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[irrational_design]

Who said anything about buying a wii u in 2017? They've been around longer than just this year. But in my ancedotal experience most parents of kids old enough to play minecraft already have a wii u so... no need to get a new console just to play minecraft.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Erbo]

Notch just likes Java. It's not pure Java, though, it uses native libraries to access OpenGL and sound.

The fact that it's Java is why it runs not only on PC and Mac, but on Linux as well. The mods you can get for it are all Java, too, so they're cross-platform compatible. (Actually, there's a few that are at least partly written in Scala.)

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[drinkypoo]

The fact that it's Java is why it runs not only on PC and Mac, but on Linux as well.

That's far from the only way to achieve that, though. Many of the problems people have with Minecraft have to deal with the way that Java handles memory.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[rtb61]

The biggest problem, well, the only problem is it is owned by M$ and they simply can not be trusted and will spy on kids, analyse them and come up with ways to manipulate and scam them of their pocket money. Sadly that is not a fucking joke, M$ has really become a bunch of sick manipulate perves and should not be trusted in any way.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Anonymous Coward]

Mojang deserves a little more credit than that. They've done more than just turn a blind eye to the technically-illegal reverse engineering of the source code for their non-open-source game, they actively assist the people who do the deobfuscation and who create things like Forge or Bukkit.

The biggest reason MS's version of minecraft will never match the popularity of the real (Java) version is because probably none of that type of shit will ever be supported. And even if it is, the motivation (or even the knowledge) isn't there anymore for people to start all over or port all the old stuff to C++. Even the added difficulty of updating mods when 1.7 and 1.8 drastically changed the game did big damage to the modding community. A whole lot (most?) of these great modpacks run on 1.6.4 or 1.7.10.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[bane2571]

Always been for sale, I bought it back in the early days (mid 2009 apparently) for around 10 Euros from memory.

Back then though it was stupidly easy to pirate because there was no account verification. Now you need an account to play.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Anonymous Coward]

Minecraft was not released on any console prior to the MS purchase.

http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Xbox_360_Edition

>Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft...released alongside a free trial version on May 9, 2012 on Xbox Live Arcade.

Re:MS Nutty aquisitions

[Ranbot]

- It has mods and modpacks... possible for others to make these. These mods add huge value to the game... the original game is really boring

That sounds like how Quake, Half-Life, and to a lesser extent Unreal Tournament were must-have PC games, because they had mods that were as good or better than the original games... Capture the Flag (Quake), Team Fortress (Quake), Team Fortress Classic (Half-Life), Counterstrike (Half-Life), Natural Selection (Half-Life), Thievery (UT), Alien Swarm (UT), and many more, including mods within mods. The mods kept these base games alive and relevant long past typical game expiration dates.

No, really?

[Harold Halloway]

Minecraft is a 3D video game

No shit, Sherlock. So glad Slashdot is here to give us the real geek news.

Re:No, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

And an easy game - I beat it in like a day.

Re:No, really?

[Dins]

If you think you beat it in a day, you're playing it wrong.

Re:No, really?

[OrangeTide]

I was finished with it after like 10 minutes.

Re:No, really?

[Dins]

To each their own.

Re:No, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

> "What is this Minecraft? I've never heard of it! Is it some kind of suppository?

It's Hitler's lesser-known book on arts and crafts.

Re:No, really?

[aicrules]

With how much help from the internets? And what do you define as beat? Just ender dragon?

Re:No, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that bothered me about this game is that I felt like I had to use the internet. Without the internet, how am I supposed to find recipes for crafting stuff. Trial and error? The number of combinations of crafting ingredients and arrangements is nearly endless. Please tell me I'm playing it wrong. I would love to hear that there's something in-game that would help me out here without having to run off to the internet when I want to make something new.

Re:No, really?

[Whorhay]

Troll is troll, such is life on the internet with anything someone likes.

I'm pretty sure I had more than 1k hours into the game before they even introduced the End, and another 1k since then. And I've still never found a fortress and gone to the End. I've also never installed any mods to alter game play, I've only every used lighting mods.

Re:No, really?

[OrangeTide]

For the record, I'm still not done with Counter-Strike. It's been around for 17 years since I started.

Some games are just inherently superior to others.

Re:No, really?

[Ogive17]

News at 11, people still play Counter-Strike. I played it for 2 weeks, it was boring.

I will admit that PvP in CS is better than PvP in Minecraft.

Re:No, really?

[aicrules]

Well trial and error for the basic stuff, yes. Some of it really "makes sense" when you think about the patterns you make and the materials you use. However, I will agree that for some of the more complex things a reference is needed for it to not take way too many hours to figure out how to make a redstone switch. I'm sure people figured them out through a combination of hacking the game and trial and error with shared knowledge. Still, when I downloaded the demo I figured out how to get wood, turn it into planks, sticks, a shovel, a pick axe (which I figured out I needed to get stone), and many other basic things with no assistance. But even when looking up patterns, I don't feel I beat the game. At that point the game is to take all these parts you can make and figure out ways to put them together. Build elaborate houses and castles etc...it's more like legos without a specific "right" way to build something. Even when I killed the Ender Dragon I didnt' feel I beat the game. It's not even a game you beat. It's an open ended game with essentially infinite variability. Don't like the world? Start a new one with a new seed and get something completely different. Go digging for caves and diamonds...build elaborate red stone machines....play with friends as a death match...play one of the many servers with dozens or more people with different rules and objectives. There is no end to the game except one you arbitrarily decide.

Re:No, really?

[aicrules]

Me and my children have minecart rollercoaster building competitions too. It's really only limited by imagination as to how far the game lasts.

Re: No, really?

[OrangeTide]

That's precisely the origin of my name. I earned the name at a LAN party in the 90's.

Re: No, really?

[OrangeTide]

Well CS is a game, and Minecraft is not.

Not all play is about games, sometimes people would rather play with a toy than play a game. I'm partial to toys like SimCity myself. But usually I prefer to play games.

FTB Infinity

[nevermore94]

I am a long time gamer, but I just could never get into stock Minecraft nor could I understand how many people would be so interested in it. Then, a coworker talked me into trying his modded Minecraft: Feed The Beast: Infinity server and it literally opened up whole new worlds and I am currently a daily addicted player.
So, my advice is if you grew bored with the original, seek out some modded servers. It can really be so much more entertaining with the right mods.
https://ftbwiki.org/Feed_The_B...

Re:FTB Infinity

[djinn6]

If there's one thing I don't like about the Minecraft modding scene is that everything is closed source. Over time, the less popular mods die because their developer doesn't have the time to update it to be compatible with the newest version. That update process takes forever too, so if you want to play with mods, you'll have to run an older version of Minecraft. Just compare that to the KSP modding community, where dead mods gets resurrected all the time by other developers and new versions of the game gets updated mods within a week or two.

Re:FTB Infinity

[Erbo]

Not everything is closed source. Some mods even have GitHub repos. Example: Simply Jetpacks, a mod I used in the Erbosoft Vista modpack.

Better options these days

[LeftCoastThinker]

I bought Minecraft in early Alpha mid 2010, and I have played and enjoyed it for a number of years. However, I was really hoping with the MS purchase that they would do a 2.0 since the graphics and 1M cube block resolution with 8 bit quality textures makes my eyes hurt these days (I like pretty things).

As MS milks Minecraft for every penny it's worth, I have moved on to a new game to satisfy my creative adventuring with more complexity and far prettier graphics, Empyrion. It is an Indy still in Alpha (5.0), but has a lot of potential and is a cross between Minecraft and what No Mans Sky should have been. (this is just my own personal opinion, but if you like Minecraft or the idea of No Mans Sky, you should check it out.)

http://store.steampowered.com/...

Re:Better options these days

[invid]

I hope they don't change it too much, I'm happy with the way it is. I have this little Minecraft world I play locally on my computer, I've had it for years. If I get stressed at work I can just go into this world and do a little more building and exploring. There's always something that needs to be done and it is satisfying and stress free (except for the occasional creeper blowing stuff up.) I'm not a fan of the mods, if it got much more complicated it would become stressful. It's my little escape I plan to retire to someday, maybe pass on to my kids.

Re:Better options these days

[LeftCoastThinker]

Invid, I was never hoping that they would change the original, just release a Minecraft 2, like every other hit game out there that has 5 sequels now.

I was like you for maybe 4 years, but the last time I played, I had all my goodies down in a mine and popped a rock and water flooded in pushing me into a 2 block tall corner with lava under it. I couldn't jump out and died and all my gear and items burned up. The whole perma-death thing with hours of items and gear is not really my idea of relaxing.

Re:Better options these days

[kEnder242]

Empyrion added to my wishlist!

Have you seen minecraft shaders? Almost brings my 1080 to it's knees. http://continuumshader.com/

Re:Better options these days

[spongman]

if Minecraft's gotten boring, try a few of these:
- get to the credits in 20 minutes in survival on hard.
- finish an adventure map (like Diversity 1/2, Drobnovian Knights, Terra Restore)
- finish a CTM map by vechs, amlup or hilecio
- complete an HQM skyblock rebuild modpack (like Agrarian Skies, Project Ozone 1/2)
- complete an HQM story modpack (like Crash Landing, Material Energy^3/4, BlastOff)

What I usually hear about it...

[Parker Lewis]

Old gamers always ask "how is this fun?". Like all new technologies and its relation throw generations, give it to a child, and you'll see how amazing it can be!

That is not a lot...

[HalAtWork]

Considering how many PCs out there are actually capable of running the game, that doesn't sound like a lot.