Minecraft continues to sell at a mind-boggling pace: Developer Mojang has now sold 122 million copies of the sandbox exploration game across all platforms, the Microsoft-owned Swedish studio announced today.
Microsoft’s previous milestone was 100 million copies, which Minecraft reached in early June 2016. That means that a whopping 22 million people bought a copy of the game in the last nine months. Asked by Polygon, a Microsoft representative clarified that although the company has been allowing owners of the original Java-based PC/Mac version of Minecraft to get a free copy of Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition, Microsoft does not include those redemptions in its sales calculation.
“The 122M units is paid units to players only,” the spokesperson told Polygon.
Mojang also announced today that Minecraft currently has 55 million monthly active players, an increase of 37.5 percent from the 40 million that Microsoft reported back in June. It’s possible that the recent release of version 1.0 of Minecraft’s Windows 10 Edition and Pocket Edition — the former is essentially a port of the latter — helped raise the number of monthly active users. Mojang released the Ender Update for those versions in mid-December, officially bringing them out of beta.
Microsoft had been selling the beta of Minecraft’s Windows 10 Edition at a discounted price of $9.99. However, now that the game is past version 1.0, that deal will soon end — the price will go up to its normal level, $26.99, after March 20.
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Film-maker Ben Wheatley has revealed how he used the video game Minecraft to help him build the set for his new action movie Free Fire.
The film starring Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copley and Michael Smiley is dominated by a complicated shootout in an abandoned factory.
During a Q&A on the movie in Inverness, Wheatley said he first created the factory’s layout in Minecraft.
This helped to guide physical scale models and the final set.
Wheatley, director of High-Rise and Sightseers, was in Inverness on Monday as part of a tour of UK cinemas with his film before it goes out on general release.
The Minecraft franchise continues to soar. Microsoft announced today that the series has passed 121 million copies sold and 55 million unique players. This is the first official sales and engagement update since June, when Microsoft confirmed 100 million sales and 40 million unique monthly players.
Microsoft celebrated the new Minecraft milestones today with some animated GIFs that speak to the enormity of the sandbox game as it relates to sales and monthly users.
At the time the buyout was announced, Persson said about the deal: “It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.”
Minecraft is available on PC and all major consoles, as well as smartphones. Looking ahead, Minecraft and Minecraft: Story Mode are headed to Nintendo Switch.
“I don’t know if Minecraft 2, if that’s the thing that makes the most sense,” he said at the time. “The community around Minecraft is as strong as any community out there. We need to meet the needs and the desires of what the community has before we get permission to go off and do something else.”
It’s no fantasy land or sci-fi expanse, but it’s still impressive: a team of Minecraft builders are recreating the centre of Chicago, one block at a time.
Their work isn’t done, but what’s there is very impressive, as it captures everything, from building details to street signs to trees on the sidewalk.
It’s called The Loop, and if you want to try it out you can download it here.
