It turns out Minecraft players really want to build houses and dig for obsidian while on the go.
When Minecraft first proved it could sell millions of copies, we were still surprised by the game’s novelty. When the Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition hit the same milestone, we were shocked that it happened in five days. So we really shouldn’t be surprised when the Minecraft Pocket Edition sells well, but its recent 10 million mark remains a jaw-dropping achievement. It’s surprising partly because Pocket‘s features were so limited that Mojang wondered if it had made a mistake, but more importantly, the feature-rich PC version took four full years to reach the exact same figure.
Not willing to rest on its laurels, Mojang fully intends to continue its support of Minecraft‘s successful mobile version. A recent update added the ability to change game options without quitting to the main menu, while new features are planned for players with higher-end devices. Mojang is also readying an alpha version of Minecraft Pocket Realms, which will let users create a limited number of servers on a first-come-first-serve basis. Once Mojang has tested the initial Realms launch, additional servers will follow.
What impresses me isn’t only that sales of Minecraft are high across the board, but that they’ve grown consistently ever since the PC alpha was revealed in 2009. Few games can maintain high annual sales across a single platform, let alone across every platform Mojang publishes Minecraft on. Now that a disc-based version of Minecraft will soon arrive in stores, we probably shouldn’t be surprised when those numbers increase even further. If history is any indication however, we probably will be.
