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.
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.
I don't have the raw data but I have checked the stats page every week or so during the last few months. Minecraft consistently sells around 9,000 copies per day. I also got the impression that that number grew from around 8,000 to around 9,000 during the last months but I could be wrong about that. That rate of growth doesn't seem to grow anymore but it also doesn't seem to shrink. 9,000 copies per day at 15€ is a huge amount of money.
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.
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.
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.
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?
For me, it's got kind of the same appeal that lego did as a kid. And The Incredible Machine.
It has other appealing elements, for sure. Exploring large dark randomly generated cave systems with danger at every turn, combining items with other items to make new, more exciting items.
But ultimately, Minecraft taps into the same kind of fun as lego. IMO, it does it even better.
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!!
[+] [-] asb|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] citricsquid|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ugh|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nazgulnarsil|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DarkShikari|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Joakal|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morgantwenty|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rudiger|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedsmith|15 years ago|reply
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/angry-birds-one-of-the-mo...
[+] [-] xal|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srgseg|15 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] nickknw|15 years ago|reply
It has other appealing elements, for sure. Exploring large dark randomly generated cave systems with danger at every turn, combining items with other items to make new, more exciting items.
But ultimately, Minecraft taps into the same kind of fun as lego. IMO, it does it even better.
[+] [-] morgantwenty|15 years ago|reply
Pretty much exactly that.
[+] [-] Herwig|15 years ago|reply