notch posts

Minecraft has proven to be the "little indie game that could" as the PC sandbox/adventure game created by Markus "Notch" Persson has continued to see steady sales with almost no marketing and no use of the typical PC download services. Today (in fact just a few minutes ago) Minecraft sold its 1 millionth digital copy, according to its stats page. That number is basically unheard of for a indie-made PC game and would be impressive for any PC exclusive game, period.

The game was first launched in an "alpha" stage in May 2009 which allowed people to buy the game and be assured they would get all of its future updates and expansions for free. Persson continued to update the game with new features but it took over a year for the game to reach 100,000 units sold. That would still be an impressive sales number for an indie PC game. However Minecraft rose rapidly in sales and popularity thanks to some well placed internet postings in the summer of 2010, including a rave review on Valve's Team Fortress 2 web site in July 2010. The game had sold 125,000 units in September but it only took just over four months for Minecraft to reach today's 1 million sales mark. Even when Minecraft moved into its beta stage last December (with a 25 percent raise in its price) sales of the game have yet to slow down.

While Persson was reportedly courted to join major developers like Valve and Bungie over the summer, he decided instead to stay in his native Sweden to launch his own indie game company Mojang Specifications. The company currently has six people, including Persson, on board where they work on improving and adding to Minecraft as well as a second, unnamed game project. In the meantime Minecraft itself is technically still not yet completed. Recently Persson stated that they were looking to finally "complete" the game by the end of 2011.

Ever since the game's release back in May 2009, the indie-made sandbox game Minecraft has technically been made available as an alpha build. That hasn't stopped the game from generating an unbelieveable fan base and sales that currently total over 725,000 units. Today the game's developer Markus "Notch" Persson announced on his blog that Minecraft is now very close to entering its beta phase.

How close? Persson states that the beta version will go live on December 20. As he states, "With Beta comes a larger focus on polish and content, and we'll start early on with adding proper modding support with a stable API, and we'd love all input we can get on this from the modders out there." Look for an actual narrative to Minecraft to be added for the early parts of the game as well as a goal to achieve in the later parts of the game.

Pricing for the game will also go up to 14.95 Euros when the beta launches. After beta starts, the promise that all future versions will be free will be removed so if you want to get the game for a cheaper price and be assured of getting future versions at no cost, now is the time. Look for a new update to the game before it hits beta sometime next week. Also look for gift codes for Minecraft to be made available soon which, if used by December 20, will count as buying the alpha version.

Trying to find out about specific sales figures for downloadable PC games is nearly impossible. Publishers don't want to reveal them and PC game download sites like Steam only give a general percentage of the kinds of sales it generates. But the creator of the hit sandbox game Minecraft doesn't mind showing running sales stats right on the game's official web site.

In a new chat with Gamesindustry.biz (free registration required) the game's creator Markus 'Notch' Persson stated the reason for offering sales numbers for Minecraft (which went over the 650,000 unit mark earlier today) was " ... for the people who had brought the game could see like a number increase on a webpage or something." While he admits having the numbers for all to see could be construed as a form of bragging he states, " Personally I like sharing that information, because I'm generally an open guy." He has no plans of removing the running sales stats from the site saying, "I think it's a good sign, if you're actually open with your development and you're also open about the sales, it feels like you're genuine in some sense."

While players are still likely checking out the new content in the recently released "Halloween" update for Minecraft, the hit indie sandbox game has issued a new patch that fixes some bugs in the title. The patch, via the game's auto-updater, deals with a number of issues in the game including reducing the CPU load for monster spawning, fixing the leaf particle colors and fixing a bug that caused players to get stuck on top of the gameplay world in multiplayer.

Minecraft's next major content update is scheduled to add survival mode in multiplayer. Meanwhile sales of the game, which reached 500,000 copies just a week ago, should reach the 550,000 sales mark later today.

It's been a little while since the last official blog update from the creator of Minecraft but this week Markus "Notch" Persson updated the site with a little more info on the upcoming Halloween update to the popular indie sandbox game (which should break the 450,000 unit sales barrier by the end of the day today).

He states that the update will include "six new block types (five of them have unique abilities), one new monster, a new dimension, and a couple of bug fixes." He also gives a business update stating that the development team at Mojang Specifications is now composed of six people "three programmers, one pixel artist, one CEO and one Business Developer."

Markus has also been updating his Twitter page constantly and in one update he states, "Yes, you will eventually be able to link servers with portals. NOT SOON, though." The idea of thousands of Minecraft players linking to their games via portals might turn this indie sandbox game into an MMO title ... maybe.

It seems Notch has taken a page from the average MMO developer's and Valve's penchants for big preview announcements. The runaway blockbuster hit Minecraft will be getting a massive update on Halloween, as detailed on a separate page on the Minecraft site. This update will include many asked-for features including fishing, biomes, a separate travel dimension (hell), more tense cavern exploration, new and tougher enemies, and a slew of fixes to multiplayer. There will also be holiday-themed goodies, such as jack-'o-lanterns! The full list of planned changes is after the cut in picture form, as that's the way it was original presented.

The indie sandbox game Minecraft has continued to gain more and more users. While that's a good thing in some ways on Saturday it was also part of the reason for a server outage that's still going on as of the posting of this news article. The game got a new automatic update on Saturday that cause the game's servers to basically shut down due to the number of new users.

Minecraft itself is still available to download and until the update file server issues are fixed the game will have an unexpected free-to-play weekend until the servers are back up. After that the game will be disabled for anyone that hasn't purchased Minecraft.

Earlier this month Markus Persson, the developer behind the hit indie sandbox game Minecraft, announced that he was going to launch a proper game development company and start hiring people to work on both Minecraft as well as a second unannounced game title. Today the studio sent out a press release announcing the name of the company, Mojang Specifications.

The company has hired its first outside person, Daniel Kaplan, who previously worked at another indie game developer Ludosity who made, among other games, the acclaimed title Bob Came in Pieces. Kaplan will be handling the business aspects of the new company which should allow Persson and his unnamed partner to work on their game projects. The press release also said that sales of Minecraft have now gone over 155,000 copies

The indie sandbox game Minecraft has generated a lot of press and also a lot of sales recently, even though the game is technically still in an alpha stage (the game's official web site says that over 125,000 copies of Minecraft have been sold). The creator of the game, Markus "Notch" Persson, recently returned to his native Sweden after a visit to the US where he met with fans as well as members of Valve and Bungie.

In his latest blog post Persson states that he has been saving up his money and now plans to hire more people and launch "a proper company" in concert with a unnamed partner. Minecraft will continue to be developed by Persson while a second game project will also begin. Persson states, "It will be developed in parallel with Minecraft, and has a fairly different style both in visuals and gameplay." There no other info on what the second game will be like.

We can't say we're too surprised about this development, given the Team Fortress 2 team's love of Minecraft. Notch, according to a tweet this morning, is in talks with Valve over the future of Minecraft. As he has expressed desire to bring the excellent construction and survival simulation to Steam, that seems like the obvious choice, but other possible outcomes include licensing the Source engine for a future game or even being absorbed into Valve proper. It's also completely possible that none of these are happening, and Valve simply wanted to talk with Notch because they are huge fans of his work. This association is great news for both Minecraft and Notch, as interaction with Valve will give the Swedish developer even more exposure for his incredible independent title.