Minecraft for Xbox reaches 4 million, PC download cards now in retail
4J Studios announced that Minecraft XBLA has crossed the four million sales mark, just as Mojang begins selling download cards for the PC version in retail stores.
Minecraft continues to be a sales juggernaut. In fact, the Xbox Live version has just recently crossed the four million mark. Not to be outdone, the PC original can now be purchased at retail stores.
Mojang announced that prepaid Minecraft cards are being sold in Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy stores. For the time being, only US stores are selling the cards. They're download codes rather than retail discs, so this really only helps if you wanted to pay cash for your Minecraft. On the XBLA front, 4J Studios announced the 4 million number via Twitter.
Minecraft has sold more on the PC, currently ticking above 7.5 million copies. Then again, the PC version has been on sale for much longer, so it's hard to say which game is really winning the race. Any way you slice it, though, Mojang and 4J Studios are cleaning up with the block-building title.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Minecraft for Xbox reaches 4 million, PC download cards now in retail.
4J Studios announced that Minecraft XBLA has crossed the four million sales mark, just as Mojang begins selling download cards for the PC version in retail stores.-
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Agreed. My son and his friends come up with some really great creations for 8 year olds and I love that the game exercises their creative minds. It has just enough action to keep them interested but checking out what they come up with has been my favorite so far. Last week they lined a lake bottom with glass then removed all the earth from around it and had a floating lake. COOL!
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OK, interesting.
Minecraft on the website is $26.95 USD. Presumably, after bank and transaction fees, Mojang keeps the rest.
Minecraft on these cards is also $26.95 USD. Presumably, the store selling it is taking a cut, so I imagine that they make less on a purchase of these than they would a digital sale. However, there's some amount of cash-only business or "it doesn't exist unless it's physical" sales they're missing out on, so it makes sense that they'd do this.
I guess I wonder then why they're still holdouts on Steam. Some article recently had Notch quoted as saying he wasn't convinced that Steam's cut was the best thing for them. But Steam's cut can't be worse than Walmart's, can it?
Maybe they figure if you're going to buy it digitally, buy it from them (and they've had no problems with selling large numbers through their website, that early PayPal BS notwithstanding) but surely by now most people who would have found it on their own have done it by now, yes?
I guess I'm wondering - if Minecraft were available through Steam would it matter? Maybe I'm way off and Minecraft still sells shit tons from their site and so they figure just keep it all.-
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I kinda remember that post now, but in the time since there's been lots of F2P games launched on Steam and many of those handle their own transactions/content updates (many people were annoyed to discover that Tribes Ascend isn't updated by Steam) so I wonder if the situation he's referring to is the same or not.
Notch is a smart guy and I know that he's probably not at liberty to divulge Steam details so I take him at his word that there's really something incompatible there, but I'd still be curious to know what it is.-
They handle their own transactions/content updates, but I was under the impression that anything sold in those games has to be available to purchase through the in-game steam store as well (ie. those F2P games can't have in-game items that could only be purchased directly through the game's website, which is what notch is getting at with his capes example).
Also, a slightly newer interview where he talks about other reservations he has about Valve/Steam: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/15/future-talk-notch-on-steam-windows-8-whats-next/
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