Microsoft has revealed its latest numbers for Minecraft, and, astonishingly, it’s acquired another 20 million monthly players since previous figures were released just under a year ago.
Last October, official numbers revealed that Minecraft had accumulated 91 million monthly active users, which in itself was a massively leap from December 2017, when the game set a new record with over 74 million players logging in for their fix of cube-based adventure. And Minecraft’s popularity shows no signs of abating, with head of Minecraft Helen Chiang telling Business Insider in a new interview that the game has now amassed 112 million monthly players.
That, of course, accounts for players across all platforms (of which there are many), alongside those playing through Xbox Game Pass – but, even so, it’s another impressive, and slightly head-spinning, number. Furthermore, it sees Minecraft once again stealing the lead over free-to-play rival Roblox, which announced 100 million monthly active users back in August.
Taken alongside developer Mojang’s announcement in July that Minecraft has now sold over 176 million copies (potentially making it the best-selling video game of all time), it’s clear that Minecraft, despite recently celebrating its tenth birthday, continues from strength to strength.
And with such a healthy player base, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is still leaning heavily on the IP which it famously paid $2.5 billion USD for back in 2014. Alongside continuing support of the core game, including the rather swish-looking raytracing update, Microsoft currently has free-to-play, Pokémon-Go-style mobile offering Minecraft Earth in beta for iOS and Android, and is working on the promising Minecraft Dungeons for next year.
