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Microsoft acquired Minecraft maker Mojang nearly two years ago, and at the time it had sold more than 50 million copies across PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and other platforms. Microsoft is revealing today that Minecraft has now reached the 100 million sale milestone, having sold 53,000 copies per day during the course of 2016. It’s a phenomenal achievement for a game that started off as a bedroom project, distributed initially as a Java applet on a web forum.
Minecraft quickly captured the imagination of thousands of gamers who loved the indie game’s concept of allowing players to shape an environment by crafting and building constructions out of blocks. It has spawned a giant community that creates replica objects and YouTube tips on how to play Minecraft that are regularly shared with millions of viewers.
Alongside the 100 million milestone, Microsoft is also sharing a break down of exactly how Minecraft players engage with the game across the world. There are Minecraft players in every country and every territory on the planet, and Microsoft says four copies have even been sold to people in Antarctica. There are now an average of more than 40 million unique Minecraft players each month across all the various platforms the game is available on. The split of PC / console / pocket edition usage across Europe is roughly even, while in North America the pocket edition and console versions are the most popular.
Microsoft’s acquisitions haven’t always worked out (Nokia’s phone business), but it’s clear Minecraft is a big success. Microsoft’s video games revenue has been climbing steadily since the Minecraft acquisition, and it increased by $367 million in the 2015 financial year “mainly due to sales of Minecraft.” Microsoft is now turning the game into an education business, launching a special Education Edition that’s customized for schools. Microsoft researchers are even allowing computer scientists to use the game to train up AI programs, and the software maker is also developing a holographic version of Minecraft for its HoloLens headset.
Minecraft, the world-building game which has captured the hearts and minds of young people (and plenty of older people) everywhere, is finally getting into the fighting business. According to Minecraft’s owner, Microsoft, which bought the franchise for $2.5 billion in 2014, has announced that it is releasing a new mini-game for consoles called Battle.
Jaime Limon, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Minecraft, describes it as a “competitive multiplayer fight for survival, where speed, strategy—and sometimes just pure luck—will make you the winner.” Players rely on resources placed around the maps to fight each other. Once they’ve fallen victim to another player, they’re free to hang around—literally, because they’ll be flying around as a bat—and watch the death match until it’s over.
The mini game, which is coming in June, marks a turning point for Minecraft, which became such a sensation precisely because, unlike so many other hit games, it wasn’t about violence or killing opponents. Instead, players thrived on the open-ended creativity encouraged by Minecraft’s world. Now that there’s an officially sanctioned forum for battle, it’s bound to change the nature of the game.
Overwatch is great and all, but I’ve got Trails of Cold Steel to catch up on.
See, I’m only up to Chapter 4 of Falcom’s excellent (but slow-paced) JRPG, and I’ve gotta crank through the rest of the game in time for E3. There’s apparently a big twist at the end, and there’s no way to avoid being spoiled if I want to play the demo of Cold Steel 2 at the convention. That gives me about two weeks to get it done, which seems doable.
I’ll also be playing Final Fantasy XIV, poking around in Wild Arms 3, and continuing my quest to win MVP in NBA 2K16.
And, OK, fine, I’ll probably slip in some Overwatch too. What about you guys?
Publisher Sony confirmed tonight that, as Kotaku reported earlier this week, No Man’s Sky is delayed out of June. The ambitious space game will now be out on August 9.
“As we approached our final deadlines, we realized that some key moments needed extra polish to bring them up to our standards,” director Sean Murray wrote on the PlayStation Blog this evening. “I have had to make the tough choice to delay the game for a few weeks to allow us to deliver something special.”
It’s been a wild past few days in the No Man’s Sky community, filled with everything from nonsensical speculation to social media witch hunts to death threats sent my way for reporting on the delay. Now it’s finally official.
