New York Times Magazine has published a detailed breakdown of the Minecraft phenomenon revealing that, five years on from the title’s initial launch, Mojang and Microsoft’s sandbox game continues to sell upwards of 10,000 copies every day.
That’s an eye-watering statistic, and proof if ever it was needed that Minecraft is right up there with the industry’s sales juggernauts.
Clive Thompson was the scribe behind the astute think piece, noting that the average Minecraft player is between 28 and 29, with women representing 40 percent of the overall user base.
Here’s a brief extract from the comprehensive article:
Minecraft is an incredibly complex game, but it’s also — at first — inscrutable. When you begin, no pop-ups explain what to do; there isn’t even a “help” section. You just have to figure things out yourself. (The exceptions are the Xbox and PlayStation versions, which in December added tutorials.) This unwelcoming air contrasts with most large games these days, which tend to come with elaborate training sessions on how to move, how to aim, how to shoot. In Minecraft, nothing explains that skeletons will kill you, or that if you dig deep enough you might hit lava (which will also kill you), or even that you can craft a pickax.
Further in the piece, Clive Thompson goes on to highlight that Minecraft‘s greatest feat is that it largely leaves players to their own devices — and is all the better of for it.
