9 ms·
Minecraft sales top 100M
- davidiach 10y ago>Microsoft's video games revenue has been climbing steadily since the Minecraft acquisition, and it increased by $367 million in the 2015 financial year "mainly due to sales of Minecraft." Is that really a lot? How much more do they need to sell to get their money back from what they spent to buy Minecraft in the first place?
- noir_lord 10y agoThey paid 2bn for Minecraft, not sure if 367m is just software sales or merchandising as well but the merchandise is everywhere here in the UK and it seems to sell well.
- NDizzle 10y agoThe merchandising is awesome too. I see kids with creeper backpacks and I wish I had things like that when I was that age.
- emddudley 10y agoNot sure when or where you grew up, but at least in US in the 80s and 90s there were tons of television and video-game branded merchandise...
- glandium 10y agoIn the 80s and 90s, it tended to be the opposite, though: tons of merchandise for which "advertising" television shows were created (things that come to mind are GI Joe, M.A.S.K. ...).
- cwyers 10y agoIt's a tax dodge, is what it is. Mojang is based in Sweden, so Microsoft could buy it with the big hoard of foreign cash they're avoiding repatriating to avoid paying tax on it a second time. Then, all the domestic sales of Minecraft are money that's on American shores already.
- jonknee 10y agoAnd they'll pay tax on the profit of those US sales... It's not a dodge.
- whamlastxmas 10y agoThe alternative is using that same money in the US to generate sales, meaning there is sales tax eventually on it anyway. It is still saving hundreds of millions in tax by not repatriating it.
- dexwiz 10y agoI am surprised Minecraft doesn't have licensed content you can buy, like how I can buy Spiderman or Harry Potter Legos. Seems likes a logical next move, considering their target audience is very similar.
- thomnottom 10y agoMinecraft licensed to Lego a few years ago. Lego even just revealed another big set from Minecraft just this month.[0] [0] http://shop.lego.com/en-US/The-Village-21128?icmp=SHM_21128 http://shop.lego.com/en-US/The-Village-21128?icmp=SHM_21128
- wyldfire 10y agoI think they meant the flip side of that -- having Spider-Man and Harry Potter themed downloadable content for the Minecraft game.
- dexwiz 10y agoCorrect. I know Minecraft has a large modding community. But last I checked, I had to download third party software to do this.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- thomnottom 10y agoAhh, gotcha. That makes more sense. The Lego comparison was confusing because of the existing marketplace.
- cma 10y agoThe Wii U edition has Mario themed stuff.
- cableshaft 10y ago
- asimuvPR 10y agoThe Minecraft EDU version has still not officially launched. It has the potential to simply take the ed tech market by storm. Those sales numbers should be interesting.
- Nullabillity 10y agoMinecraftEdu has existed for years. That new one is just crippled and much more expensive...
- rocky1138 10y agoHow much of this is due to mods and minigames? No one I know plays stock vanilla Minecraft anymore. This is even stranger, considering mods and minigames have never been supported by Mojang directly.
- treeform 10y agoMajority of Minecraft comes from console/mobile. Minecraft mobile surpassed Minecraft desktop in 2013, with consoles doing same thing later. Most people don't play the original java version that has mods. Most people don't play with mods. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/225643/Understanding_what_Minecraft_really_means_to_Microsoft.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/225643/Understanding_what... http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/29/5665834/minecraft-sales-15m-copies-pc http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/29/5665834/minecraft-sales-15m...
- Diederich 10y agoMy son and I are pretty deep into Minecraft, and we have been for a number of years now. We certainly play Feed The Beast modpacks, but we spend most of our time on client-vanilla but modified servers. Regarding your last statement, it does strike me as a strange thing as well, but also consider what Linux kernel you're running. For non-HN people, the chances are essentially zero that they're running a Linus kernel. I haven't run a Linus kernel in...I can't even remember. Granted, the analogy has some weaknesses, starting with how one needs to essentially hack mods into Mojang's official releases, a rather different approach than 'modding' the Linux kernel.
- outworlder 10y agoI am not sure that the analogy works at all. Any child can download a "Feed the Beast Launcher" or somesuch that's able to install a modpack with a single click. For some packs, that amounts to hundreds of mods. Who cares if that requires hacking bytecode, that's all abstracted away. It's even abstracted away from developers, ever since Forge was released.
- ericbarnes 10y agoMy kids and I play the stock iOS version all the time. Could be outliers but we just play for the building aspect.
- tonmoy 10y ago>Microsoft says four copies have even been sold to people in Antarctica Does anybody know who these people might be?
- blktiger 10y agoAlso, how do they know the sales are in Antartica?
- brianwawok 10y agoBilling address? 96598 is the zip code of the south pole.
- ryanlol 10y agoPresumably based on netblocks and email addresses, I doubt anyone's billing info is going to match their location though.
- wyldfire 10y agoI'd wager it's scientists and/or laborers at McMurdo.
- newobj 10y agoIf you have young kids, then there's a good chance you know how deeply Minecrafted has penetrated their worlds, replacing or augmenting Legos (or other, lesser, building toys) and video games in general. It's more than that they've sold 100M units, it's that there's an entire generation of kids now whose basis for creativity/entertainment is Minecraft, and who knows what future behavior that will inform. It's not just a staggering number of units, it's a shift in shared cultural experience for a generation.
- gadders 10y agoIt's not just playing Minecraft either - it's watching videos of other people playing Minecraft EG: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/10980512/Stampylongnose-the-Youtube-star-youve-never-heard-of.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/10980512/Stampylon... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Garrett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Garrett
- stanmancan 10y agoMy 9 year old daughter regularly watches "TheDiamondMinecart" on YouTube, who has 10.9 million subscribers. From the little I've seen, it looks like about 80% of his videos are Mincraft, 20% other games.
- newobj 10y agoYeah, we (if you are 30ish plus or minus) probably had TV shows and cartoons as shared reference points - this generation will have which Youtubers they watched as those reference points.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoI don't know about that, there are so many more YouTube channels and videos, while there were few enough OTA channels and shows that there will be common experiences. Everyone knows who Bugs Bunny is, and can probably share the memory of a few plot points of some iconic episodes. A group of people 20 years from now talking about videos they watched on YouTube will have a hard time coming up with a channel that two of them remember watching, much less a particular video. Unless, of course, they play the stupid game of "no, I remember one that was funnier" and spend the time searching on their phones for that one video that will one-up the others while to playing the videos they have queued up...ugh. https://xkcd.com/920/ https://xkcd.com/920/
- lowtolerance 10y agoI haven't played in years, but it's incredible how popular this game has become. One day, I'll be able to prove to my kids that I played Minecraft before it even went Beta.
- Loughla 10y agoI have a screenshot receipt just to be able to show them how few people were playing when I was. I can't wait to get the "you're so out of touch" eyerolls from them when they're teenagers.
- Joof 10y agoI played wurm and hit up notch on IRC. Suggested some gamejam ideas before I personally could code. My claim to fame :p
- sandworm101 10y ago100 million sales. So? MS bought Minecraft for $2,500,000,000. At this point, for all it's popularity, Minecraft is still being subsidized by the other MS products. It has yet to reach profitability and might never do so ... at least for Microsoft. Notch certainly made his numbers.
- Mahn 10y agoIt's not about what it is today, it's about what it can become. Minecraft is firmly in the trajectory of becoming absolutely massive, and if nothing stops its pace in the next few years, it's not crazy for Microsoft to bet that it will become profitable at the price they paid in the next 5 years or so.
- pakitan 10y agoThe cold hard numbers suggest that Minecraft is well past its peak. MS sold 50M copies for 2 years, which is ~ 70K/day. 2016 they have sold 50K/day. Also: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=minecraft https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=minecraft And really, 100M is already "absolutely massive" in my book. How much bigger can it grow? Will everyone on Earth be playng Minecraft?
- whamlastxmas 10y agoI believe that's 100 million COPIES sold, not $100 million in revenue. At $27/copy, you do the math.
- Mahn 10y agoAccording to Wikipedia this makes it the second best selling video-game of all time [1], only behind Tetris. Pretty impressive. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...
- math0ne 10y agoThis is impressive but I imagine at this point the profit in minecraft is in the brand, merch is everywhere, there is minecraft lego, etc. It's pretty impressive how much of a cultural icon steve and the creeper have become, in the long run I think this will be a good purchase for MS.
- neves 10y agoMy sons, 8 and 10 years old, have just got bored of Minecraft. Their friends are all on Clash of Clans or their subproducts. Even worse, they are spending a lot of time just watching Netflix. I'd prefer they were doing something that stimulates more their intellect. I think MC is a really cool and creative game. A lot better than other videogames. How would I get them interested again?
- MaxLeiter 10y agoHave they tried using mods?
- neves 10y agoSure. They use the Technich Laucher and install mods themselves. They also played a lot of minigames in online servers.
- giancarlostoro 10y agoTry to get them into making their own mods. There's childrens books on just doing that. They would learn programming, and we know that's a rabbit hole that once you're hooked, you may never get out.
- j_s 10y agoMight not be interesting, but maybe worth trying: TeachCraft – Learning Python Through Minecraft (learning programming) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11599714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11599714 The Minecraft Generation (Roblox and other alternatives/enhancements) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11496228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11496228
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y agoTry making it more constrained. I play beta 1.7.3 with no mods, which has a much smaller selection of blocks and resources and makes you be more creative to accomplish the same goals.
- tonetheman 10y agoAnd yet somehow installing mods is a way to kill the parent in your family. :( I know there are some tools around this but it is a painful exercise in version numbers to get anything working in minecraft with mods.