Right, I think it’s fair to say that the PC version is probably at or near saturation, but console/mobile sales are still doing well. For how long, and how much money they actually make on a $7 Android app, I don’t know, but it’s still doing well.
And yeah, perhaps Mojang isn’t quite Right Said Fred, but they haven’t shown any good evidence of being able to come up with further hits–and the guy who wrote their one hit is taking the money and leaving, resulting in the acquisition of a bunch of folks who have simply been adding things/fixing an existing game.
I suppose, though, with the IP, even if they don’t make “Minecraft 2” they can make all sorts of mobile or other games–“Steve’s Creeper Hunt” or whatever.
I also wonder if, now that it’s Microsoft instead of Notch, if they added a mob that’s black, like’s to steal, and can’t swim, if they get more grief than Mojang got.
I wonder how long before extensions lead to the message:
‘We are sorry, but Minecraft is unavailable for your platform: only genuine Windows 10 and greater is supported.’.
They aren’t going to sell two billion dollars worth of T-shirts and tchotchkes.
World of Warcraft has made about ten billion dollars over its lifetime. The other top earning franchises are in the low “few billion” range. Mojang is currently pulling in about 100 million a year.
So its not completely ridiculous that a video-game franchise could make two billion over a decade or so, but Minecraft alone probably won’t. A lot of people that want it already have it, and there’s a limited amount that Microsoft can do to change its business model without pissing off its already pretty suspicious userbase.
But I suspect the plan is to have a franchise of sandbox type “Minecraft” games. If Microsoft can show the can do a good job caretaking the existing game, they’ll have a loyal user base that will follow them into future iterations, where they can actually start cashing in.
There is a market for licensing bits of Minecraft to other studios’ (or selling as microtransactions for other Microsoft) games. Look at how many Minecraft tools & weapons are in Steam Workshop.
Also didn’t Microsoft come out with their own sort of Minecraft? It was a game where you can create your own games. It sounded interesting but required Windows 8 so I never looked further. I would imagine that might be dead now.
Project Spark. It’s more or less an Xbox One showpiece. The Windows 8 version is mostly just an afterthought (as is the even more ignored Xbox 360 version). It’ll be out in October, so definitely not dead.
I don’t know how many of you guys have kids, but the passion with which they love Minecraft is absolutely out of sight. My younger daughter has at least $200 of Minecraft merchandise, and she’s a rank amateur. My eldest just got into it (when we bought it for her for her birthday) and it’s now the primary reason she owns a computer. The Minecraft bug usually hit at around 8-9 years old, so every kid younger than that is a future Minecraft consumer.
You know what they could do to make half a billion dollars in sales in six months? “Minecraft II,” that’s what. If they invited people to invest in it and kept the existing development team I would sell everything I owned to buy a piece of the action. It doesn’t really even have to be all that different from Minecraft 1.8. It’s an automatic buy for 10, 20 million users. Or “Spacecraft.” Or somethingCraft. They will buy.
If they’ve sold 20 million copies I’m surprised it’s that few. They will sell millions more. There are many, many, many millions more kids that that and once they get a taste they’re like methheads for it.
I wonder if “mineheads” or “craftheads” is the better term.
So, why is it so popular with children? I mean, I get that legos are fun but there must be more to it than virtual legos.
What did your daughter buy for 200$?
Thread: Since Microsoft is big on trying to have encompassing systems (e.g: Windows + Explorer, Xbox One + all the crap they tried to bundle with it) it’s likely that they’re buying this as a product that people will very much want and which they’ll be able to bundle their crap with.
It’s the ability to play Lego with other people, I suspect, plus to be IN the Lego world, plus have enemies.
I mean, I like the game. I got a little tired of solo play and now I can’t find a server I like, but I go back to it now and then. There’s just something about it.
It’s not what she bought, it’s what everyone else bought. What did she was for birthday/Christmas/anything? Minecraft stuff.
So she has a backpack in the shape of a creeper (huge, huge hit at school) plus a stuffed creeper toy that goes ssss-boom, and a Minecraft calendar, a plastic “Steve” figurine, two Minecraft posters, a foam diamond sword, etc. etc.
It’s a single game, you can’t really bundle anything with it.
Some people are acting like this deal is out of the blue, but MS has worked with Mojang before to create mini-expansions to the Xbox version of Minecraft skinned with Mass Effect and Halo creations. I expect to see a full scale version of “Minecraft Halo” pretty soon, similar to how Lego has made a killing with their Lego Star Wars/Lego Indiana Jones/Lego Batman games.
Yea. For much less then 2.5 billion they could get good developers and build their own similar game. But attaching it to the already popular “Minecraft” might well be worth that much, especially if they spend the next few years showing the existing community they can do a good job stewarding the already existing game.
Plus even if they don’t get their money back in direct sales, being associated with a good line of products that’s popular with young folks might be worth taking the loss, given Microsofts ailing brand.
Blizzard’s lawyers might have something to say about using the “Xcraft” formula for naming games in the franchise though.
