Minecraft: The 1st Video Game to Hit 300m sales

The most popular video game in the world, Minecraft, has set yet another sales record.

Developer Mojang Studios claimed it had now sold more than 300 million games worldwide during a weekend event.

However, neither franchise sells as many games as Super Mario, which has sold more than 800 million games in total across all of its multi-game series.

Retro puzzler Tetris, which has sold more than 520 million copies across all of its iterations since the 1980s, is the second most popular series.

Since its many releases for iOS and Android in 2008, Tetris has sold at least 425 million units exclusively on mobile devices. As a result, some lists rank it as the best-selling game.

However, these releases varied greatly in terms of gameplay and graphics, with Tetris on Ericsson phones in 2001, Tetris Mania on mobile devices in 2006, and the latter editions on iOS and Android being just a few examples.

Because of this, Tetris is typically regarded as a series, but Minecraft is the same game whether it is played on a mobile device or the Nintendo Switch.

The 300 million mark is a “milestone no one could have dreamed of when we were all placing our first blocks,” according to Helen Chiang, the head of Minecraft Studios.

Although Mojang Studios first made a pre-release, incomplete version of the game available in 2009, it wasn’t until November 2011 that the game was officially published.

Due to its sandbox aspect, which allows you to create anything you can think of with the game’s Lego-like building blocks, it is incredibly well-liked by kids, teenagers, and adults alike.

Microsoft acquired Minecraft in 2014 for $2.5 billion (£ 2 billion), and it has since become a cornerstone of its gaming empire, which it just dramatically grew with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a record-breaking $69 billion.

The immense popularity of Minecraft outside of the game itself can be attributed, at least in part, to this.

More than one trillion people have viewed Minecraft-related YouTube videos, according to Google.

Even MrBeast and PewDiePie, two of the most well-known individual YouTubers, have produced Minecraft videos in the past.

How do you reach 300,000,000?

The latest sales data the company disclosed—238 million revenues, reported in April 2021—show a significant increase.

And a large number of people purchasing more than one copy is very probably necessary to reach that amount.

Although Mojang makes its sales figures public, it is less transparent about how those numbers are broken down. Nevertheless, we do know that these figures represent sales across all platforms.

That means it includes the sales from its original launch on PC in 2011, mobile sales on iOS and Android, as well as on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles.

So somebody might have bought a copy on PC, then later picked up a copy for their Nintendo Switch, and then even later bought it on their phone too.

That is partially because consumers like playing games on their new devices, even if they have already bought them before.

But it is also because players can mostly transfer over their progress, so if they have bought the game again, gamers may use the same login credentials and pick up where they left off on multiple devices.

Not every device permits this, and gamers should check compatibility – especially when there are numerous versions of the game on PC.

But generically it might provide some explanation for how Minecraft sales have attained such dizzying heights.

Credits: BBC

Read more at News Intercept:

Caution AI sector could consume as much energy as the Netherlands

Around half a billion small tech items thrown away