Look out World of Warcraft, Notch has you in his sights. Minecraft‘s creator announced this past Friday that the build-your-own-anything game has surpassed 10 million users. Posting the official data across his personal blog, Twitter, and the game web page, Minecraft can now boast “10005777 registered users, of which 2674483 (26.72%) have bought the game.”
Dude! That is a hell of a lot of money, if Minecraft has so far sold to 2.6 million people for the beta price of 15 euros, Notch and his very small team has made over 40 million euros so far. Consider that it’s sold though his own website, meaning that none of the money goes to third party release partners. Minecraft has now made more money for the developers than a lot of triple A releases do.
Well yeah, but you have to remember that the alpha price was lower, and that had I believe over 1.5 million sales before going into beta (which I bought it in June in beta). Well, it is still a lot of money regardless, and it is great to see indie developers make a lot of money, especially one person who didn’t get greedy, and hired a bunch of friends to work on Minecraft and other games as well.
Now to see how much more it sells before release, and then when it finally officially releases.
He’s also spent practically nothing on advertising. Dude’s set for life.
This is where the money is at… release the new sensation at a low price, allowing word of mouth to spread the news and make everyone try it (for the low price, if not free). It worked for Farmville, and now it has worked for Minecraft. Hell, it even worked for Terraria, a game that was made in a month.