It’s no secret that 4J Studios’ XBLA port of developer Mojang’s Minecraft has been a runaway success. First it sold 1 million copies in less than a week, becoming the fastest-selling XBLA game to date. A few weeks later Xbox Live Portfolio Director Chris Charla revealed that the build-a-thon had doubled that number. Last month it tripled it.
Today marks exactly three months since its release, and Minecraft is apparently still tearing up the XBLA sales charts. Mojang Managing Director Carl Manneh has informed Swedish site it24 that the Xbox Live Arcade version of the title is being purchased at a rate of 17,000 times a day. The result of all of those sales will be the Swedish developer’s 2012 profits more than doubling those of 2011, according to Manneh.
“Since Mojang keeps more of the earnings from the new Minecraft versions, our turnover increases a lot this year,” he explained. The game has been a huge success since its early days on the PC, but large chunks of the profits were going to Mojang founder Markus “Notch” Persson’s Notch Development company. Now more of the money is being funneled back into Mojang, allowing for the increase in earnings.
Source: it24 via Games Industry International
