Minecraft for Xbox 360 hits 5 million copies sold
Minecraft for Xbox 360 continues to rack up the sales numbers since its release in May, surpassing the 5 million mark on the last day of 2012. Those numbers were fueled by a 453,000-sales bump on Christmas Day alone.
Minecraft for Xbox 360 continues to rack up the number of copies sold since its release in May, surpassing the 5 million mark on the last day of 2012. Those numbers were fueled by a 453,000-unit bump on Christmas Day alone.
Daniel Kaplan of Mojang Specifications tweeted the milestone only days after Markus "Notch" Persson revealed the Christmas Day figures. The new numbers show the continued popularity of the game, which became profitable after its first hour on the shelf, and sold 1 million copies within the first five days of its launch on May 9. The game continually gives Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 stiff competition on Xbox Live.
The game is almost a direct port of the PC version, which officially launched in November 2011 and has sold more than 8 million copies. The mobile version hit 5 million copies sold earlier in December.
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Shacknews
replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, Minecraft for Xbox 360 hits 5 million copies sold.
Minecraft for Xbox 360 continues to rack up the sales numbers since its release in May, surpassing the 5 million mark on the last day of 2012. Those numbers were fueled by a 453,000-sales bump on Christmas Day alone.-
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Slow news day? I guess I am still amazed the game continues to sell.
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You talking about Notch or Minecraft is an automatic troll even if you don't mean it to be.
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I said "almost" a direct port. I know there are differences.
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yah 1024 x 1024 is kinda small... that's fine for just 1-2 players I guess. But half the fun of Minecraft for me was exploring new areas. You could cover 1024 blocks in maybe ~5 mins.
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Yeah, I - for reasons that escape me - bought the iPhone version of Minecraft and it's kinda like playing the Tiger handheld version of the game. I mean it works, looks similar/identical to most of the desktop version, and is in much better shape now with survival mode (they launched without mining or crafting, just the creative mode).
But building things is a pain compared to the PC. Not so much placement of blocks as it is walking around. Mining is a pain since you have to put your bigass thumb on the screen and it obscures so much, which wouldn't be a problem except that there's mobs to avoid. And forget about getting away from them with these controls - a creeper destroys you because your thumb drifted from the spot on the screen with the controller.
Add to that the fact that it's always behind the desktop version, has no multiplayer except for ad hoc. and doesn't appear to have parity with the desktop version as a design goal, and it adds up to a fairly neutered experience.
Not sure how MCX compares to the iPhone but I can't help but wonder if it's doing Minecraft a disservice for these things to exist. I mean yeah they've sold tons of copies and so financially it's a win but over Xmas weekend all the Xbox Live folks got to see this documentary about all the awesome things their version of the game is incapable of.
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A large number of people do the same thing but then they have this experience:
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/17
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/20
So it's either not your bag or you didn't give it enough of a shot. Or didn't play on a cool server. But it's probably just not your thing.-
Lol, so true. Minecraft is one of those games that requires the creativity and design of it's user. There's little direction from the game itself, you kind of make it what you want it to be. It's basically like playing guitar for me: I come back to it when I'm inspired or feeling creative.
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Me neither. I want the scale and other benefits of the PC version, but I want to play with a controller like the XBLA version. So I've bought neither.
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Never understood why they haven't extended controller support over to the PC version.
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There's probably not much demand for it. I just like playing on the couch, and a controller helps me avoid RSI.
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it's fun and i really respect it as a product but i need more structure in my games. i end up starting a new world, building a basic house, tunneling a bit, then starting over.
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i used to love open-world games a decade ago, but lately i just want a directed experience where i can have some gameplay freedom within boundaries.
i don't want to be plopped in the middle of a map with no other cues. too much work!
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You should try it, it's quite fun. When it came out it was a pretty unique experience, although there are others in the same realm now (Terraria and such)
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it's fun till you get bored because it's one of those games where the point of it is to create your own content and there are no game given goals to keep you playing other than wanting to build some kind of structure like a 60ft golden penis tower with lava spurting out the top that when you're finished you will just realize that you wasted 30hrs of your life building for no reason.
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As opposed to wasting time shooting digital men in the face? All gaming (well, most of it) is time wasting man.
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Building a 60ft penis tower is never time wasted
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I've never tried it, it looks like a lot of fun but I'm afraid of the time commitment it could require. Same reason why I haven't played any MMO in many years.
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a) Some people take issue with the fact that it bears a strong resemblance to a previous game called Infiniminer (and some others). Depending on who you listen to, it's either analogous to a situation where someone makes a direct copy of something and becomes famous after making small tweaks, or it's analogous to being mad at Unreal for copying Quake (as in, they're just games in the same genre of course they're going to be similar)
b) Some people had an image in their mind of what they wanted the game to do or where they wanted development to go with it, and it didn't meet their expectations. This is sort of in the same category of getting mad at Valve for working on CS:GO instead of Episode 3. Part of this is a side effect of their sales model - selling a game that for years was unfinished by design and cutting people a price break in return. To some degree you were also buying the "potential" of the game as well as the alpha/beta of the game itself.
c) A game as rediculously popular as Minecraft is going to bring out the obsessive crazies, much in the same way something like 9/11 will bring out the conspiracy nuts. When you pour water on a pavement it finds every crack and crevace. When millions of people buy your game you're going to find the real crazies. I once saw a JPEG someone made criticizing the number of vacation days Notch took once the game became successful. People don't even keep up with the president's vacation schedule that closely.
d) Some people take issue with how the game purposely goes against some game development directions. Whereas most popular games try to push the graphics envelope, Minecraft looks retro and "blocky" on purpose, even to a larger extent than it needs to (you could make a game that's largely cube-based without making everything an SNES pixellated homage). Whereas most games try to tell a story and have a clear goal in mind, Minecraft - although there is an adventure mode and some logistical things like food and health/armor, plus the mobs to survive against - doesn't really have a point. You make the game whatever you want it to be. And in an age where arrows tell you where to go and tutorials explain the game, Minecraft doesn't tell you shit and just hopes you can figure out how to punch a tree.
e) Some people simply take issue with the success Mojang's had with the game or are jealous. Some of it is because Mojang is so ridiculously wealthy these days - their new office makes Google look quaint. Some of it is because a lot of people think "fuck why didn't I think of that?". Some take umbrage with the idea that Game X which they're big fans of but no one else was and the developer went under is unpopular whereas this game where you build bridges and avoid exploding green people is crazy popular (they're sort of like game hipsters).
f) Some people just don't like the game. Nothing wrong with that other than the natural human tendency to not say "well I don't like it but to each their own" and instead say "I hate this game and everyone who disagrees with me is wrong and stupid and if you like it I hate you because you're part of the problem" (though maybe not in those words)
g) And finally some number of people don't own a gaming PC or don't game on the PC and so they're playing the watered down Xbox or mobile phone version and so they don't understand what the big deal is because they're only getting a fraction of the experience. Like I mentioned above, Xbox Live users got to watch a free documentary on all the things their Xbox's version of the game can't do.-
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Even with all of those things combined the hate Notch gets on the shack alone is absurd and unwarranted. The people taking the opportunity to shit on him when he talked about his dad committing suicide recently was absolutely pathetic. All this because they didn't like the way he developed his video game.
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Oh shit man, I didn't know his dad committed suicide.
The impact of losing someone under such circumstances cannot be understated. :/-
Er. Overstated.
Fuck me running.
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Yeah I may have phrased it like people are accusing him of plagiarism but that's not what I meant. Notch is very frank about how he played Infiniminer, basically said "It would be cool if this game did X, Y and Z" and then set out to make Minecraft which was basically Infiniminer with X, Y and Z (note that I have never played Infiniminer so I don't know how valid a concept that is).
It's like those people who pile on jamiejme because Plague, Inc. is basically an improved Pandemic. Short of blatant asset theft or content plagarism it doesn't matter who did a game concept first, it matters who does it better.
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Because it's a toolset more than a game. A cool toolset, though.
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O_o
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Minecraft on PC is obviously the superior experience, but having both, and playing the XBLA version with my son split screen on a big TV, it's well done on the 360. No mods, and the worlds are a little smaller, but the crafting is really streamlined and actually preferable to me over the pc version, and it's just a lot of fun to play this game with your kid. It has an obvious appeal to the overall masses, and considering how it all came to be, I find it a bit inspiring the amount of success it has had.
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the small worlds in the 360 are a big minus for me... i enjoy exploring in this game and with 1024x1024 limit you can travel to one end of the world to the other side in about ~5-7 minutes. The PC worlds are basically limitless.
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So almost 14 million copies then, and that's not counting iOS/Android sales. Maybe another 3-4 millionthere?
http://minecraft.net/stats (just PC)
