In May of 2009, Markus "Notch" Persson decided to release the game he had created, Minecraft. Upon its initial release, the game was very unstable and clearly there was a lot of work to be done. After releasing updates over the next two and a half years, Notch was able to release the final version of his game and take it out of alpha/beta stages in November of 2011! It was around this time that Minecraft began to take the gaming world by storm!
At this time, Minecraft had sold over 13 million copies to PC players alone! This in itself is an incredible feat but Notch and Majong didn't stop there. They started brainstorming and tried to come up with a solution to expand the Minecraft community. They finally decided that the best move for them was to port Minecraft on different platforms. The next step in the games growth was the release of the Android version of the game on October 7th, 2011. Since the release of the game on the Google Play Store, Google has reported that the game has sold around 5 million copies. This brings the total of copies sold to an astounding 18 million copies for the PC and the Android operating system!
Next, Majong and Notch knew that they needed to release an iOS version of the game. They initially released the Pocket Version of the application on November 17th, 2011, just over a month after the release of the Android version. Since the release of the iOS version, Apple has reported that there have been 16.5 million downloads and it is set to top the Apple app chart for 2013!
At the beginning of 2012, Minecraft was available on 3 platforms so it was questionable where they would go from there. Then in May of 2012, Notch/Majong decided to collaborate with 4J Studios and release the Xbox Live Arcade version of the top selling game. After the game showed immense popularity amongst the Xbox Live community, they decided to create physical game discs to sell in stores to boost the sales of the game even more.
Minecraft has won over six awards including the Innovation Award, the Best Downloadable Game Award, and the Best Debut Game Award at the Game Developers Choice awards. It has also won the Audience Award and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival in 2011. Lastly, Minecraft also won a Golden Joystick Award in 2012.
To date, Minecraft has sold around 40 million copies across all platforms grossing more than 1 billion dollars in revenue. If you think this is impressive, then you are in for a surprise. On December 17th, Minecraft will be available to download for PSN users, which will add one more platform to the list. Sadly, it will only be available to download for US residents. This makes it one of the biggest game releases of all time and possibly the most popular game in the world! So what is your opinion, it Minecraft the most popular game in the world, why or why not?
Article written by Chris7S
Information compiled from Minecraft.net
