

Minecraft generated 5 million euros in March for Mojang - vilpponen
http://www.arcticstartup.com/2011/04/08/minecraft-generated-about-5-m-euros-in-march

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asb
There used to be a graph of sales over time available at
<http://m00d.net/minecraft/sales/> \- but it's down now (and has been for at
least a few weeks). Does anybody know an alternative site which collects and
displays this data? It's just taken from <http://www.minecraft.net/stats.jsp>
but as I'm interested in how it changed over the past few months it's a bit
late to scrape it myself now.

~~~
citricsquid
Hey! That's my site (m00d.net) unfortunately minecraft.net had about 90%
uptime a few months back it screwed my poorly built application, without error
checking it filled the db with junk so I took it offline and never brought it
back. Mojang told me that they liked looking at the data so I expected they'd
throw their own online, a more accurate one.

I'm considering talking to them again and seeing if they'll provide me a dump
of sales data (just the timestamp of purchases) so I can re-grapgh everything,
it would be cool.

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nazgulnarsil
the gaming industry is slowly but surely morphing into the movie industry as
the frictional costs associated with creating games goes down.

~~~
DarkShikari
The comparison is actually more valid than it sounds.

Like the movie industry, it's becoming easier and cheaper than ever to make
professional-looking films, but making "A-grade" blockbusters is becoming more
and more expensive.

This sort of transition inevitably hurts the biggest-budget producers, as
they're forced to spend more and more money to compete. Similarly, it helps
the lowest-budget producers, as they can make millions of dollars off what
would have been 10 years ago been considered a hobby project.

People tend to look at the most absurdly successful indie games like Braid,
Touhou, or Minecraft and dismiss them as one-hit wonders or exceptions to the
rule. But how many exceptions to the rule it takes before the rule becomes
invalid -- especially as games begin to compete more and more on features
besides graphics?

Many of these features are cheaper to develop and benefit from the agility and
risk-taking abilities of a smaller development team as opposed to the
designed-by-seventeen-committees-in-separate-cupboards approach of the big
game studios.

~~~
ugh
You can now add Tiny Wings (an iPhone game) to that list. The 'exceptions'
keep piling and piling. It's really quite astonishing how succesful so many
indie games have become.

~~~
DarkShikari
The 'exceptions' at this point could fill a list a mile long, especially if
you count mobile games, where it's even easier for indie developers to
compete. I picked those three in particular because:

Braid: A very successful indie game distributed entirely through relatively
traditional channels (e.g. XBLA, Steam), in contrast to the other two. It was
also rather unexpectedly innovative in a realm dominated by relatively generic
platformers.

Touhou: Almost certainly the most successful indie game series in history in
terms of the total profit across the franchise it created -- but probably not
as profitable as Minecraft for its creator because he intentionally limited
his monetization of it.

Minecraft: Probably the most successful indie game in history in terms of net
income... and the topic of the article, obviously.

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morgantwenty
I say well done to Notch. I am not a fan of Minecraft but I think he has done
a great job in how he has managed the business and development. He has been
very open, never promised too much and kept to his word in continuing
development. He has built up a lot of respect from the gaming community and
people such as myself as a person who has integrity. I wish him all the best
in the future with Minecraft and any other ideas he has. I like the way he has
done things so far and I have no doubt if he continues what he is doing he
will continue to be successful. I just hope he doesn't let the money change
him and he just ditch Minecraft after it hits 1.0 or sells it off. I highly
doubt he will though.

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rudiger
Incredible. Who could have anticipated this small game would make tens of
millions of dollars (more than any single app in the iOS app store)?

~~~
jedsmith
_It was revealed [the week of March 9th] that Rovio's hit mobile title_ Angry
Birds _cost only $140k to create and has already generated an estimated $70
million._

[http://www.industrygamers.com/news/angry-birds-one-of-the-
mo...](http://www.industrygamers.com/news/angry-birds-one-of-the-most-
profitable-games-in-history/)

~~~
rudiger
I thought maybe Angry Birds was more; tough to say though.

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srgseg
Please could someone explain Minecraft to me?

I've watched the video at minecraft.net, and I've read the entire Wikipedia
page at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft>

Despite this, I still can't figure out what the element of this game is that
makes it addictive and what convinces people to have spent a total of $30m+ on
this.

It's easy to see why Angry Birds or Portal or CounterStrike or Desktop Tower
Defence or Need for Speed is fun - but Minecraft's draw confuses me.

Is it something that can only be understood by playing it?

~~~
morgantwenty
> Is it something that can only be understood by playing it?

Pretty much exactly that.

~~~
alexgaribay
I would agree with that. I saw my roommate playing it and thought it was
completely idiotic. I bought the game a few weeks after he did. I was
definitely addicted for while.

Can't....stop....digging!

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Herwig
A game like this is truly innovative and amazing. It is so interesting to
throw people into a world and see what they do first and what they build (how
they behave). I also consider this a drug cuz its highly addictive!!

