Minecraft has sold 144 million copies

[Micael]

Minecraft had sold 50 million copies when MS bought mojang. It's now sold 144 million copies. Since acquisition MC has sold 94 million copies. 94 million in 3 and a half years. Your not counting skin packs and add ons, merchandise, Minecraft education and also it being a free to play game in China with 20 million users. It's not made 6 billion dollars of course but I think your underestimating how successful it's been for them

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If you read my post you will see that I doubled the amount of money they made in sales, that was to account for all the other stuff we don't have numbers for, I doubled it because really it is all massive speculation since as far as I know there are no publicly available numbers for that stuff.
Also as you said China has 20 million users, I have no idea if they are even counting that as sales or not, if they are they are selling significantly less than they are saying.

You forget about merchandise, the game is insanely popular among children and sells gangbusters on that alone. Who ever approved that purchase in Microsoft is a genius.

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I did not forget about merchandising it is covered and the reason why the revenue numbers for sales are doubled, which once again no idea how accurate it is, but merchandising is all speculation due to unavailable numbers.

They didn't buy it to make their money back, that's not how investments work. The money they spent didn't go away, Minecraft still has a ton of value and is giving them a great return on investment. Think about it this way: if you have 3 billion dollars, what the hell can you spend it on to actually see a good return? It's not that easy. Smaller investments are much easier to grow, because there's more room for say a million dollar company to become a 10 million dollar company.

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I wouldn't go anywhere near to say that it is not how investments work "

investment
ɪnˈvɛs(t)m(ə)nt/
noun
noun: investment; plural noun: investments
1.
the action or process of investing money for profit."

Every company, certainly publicly traded ones are investing money to make money, that being said I did mention at the end that the reason why microsoft bought minecraft wasn't primarily for its money making capabilities, it is for the reach the game has, which ofc has its own value especially when like microsoft you can push other products.

I could walk into my sons room and construct a 4 foot pile of merchandise easily. Books, stuffed animals, foam pickaxes and swords, Halloween costumes, T-shirts, action figures, light enhanced Diamond and Redstone blocks, creeper pajamas. I imagine I'm missing a lot of things.

He then owns the Game on X360, Amazon Kindle, Switch, 3DS, Windows 10, Xbox One X, google phone. With all DLC and Skin packs. Plus the Minecraft telltale series.

That's the pressure I'm under. I'm just a single parent of an obsessed child. His birthday parties even had Minecraft Piñatas.......

It's an epidemic!!!

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Sure its the reason why I doubled the amount of sales the game had, also one needs to remember that while you might have spent more money on merchandise than on the game, it doesn't mean that microsoft is getting more money from that than from the copies you bought, between the cost of manufacturing, shipping, the cut they end up getting might not be that high.

In the end I see minecraft as at best having made around the investment back at this point, it certainly hasn't made 2 or 3 times its investment back, especially since I quite suspect we would have heard about it by now, it is not the sort of news that I feel like microsoft would keep to themselves in a publicly traded company.

 

[Bio]

You are severely over estimating how much minecraft does, they have almost assuredly not even made the 2.5 billion back, they sold roughly 22 million copies in 2017 since in february of 2017 they reported 122 million copies sold, assuming the distribution of platforms remained constant since 2016 easily 40% of those sales are for the mobile version which is 7$ or roughly 62 million $, but ofc there is a very good chance that apple and google are taking 30% of that, so around 43 million (very rough calculations losing a few million here and there), then lets assume the consoles see around another 40%, which at 27$ is 240 million $, console sales have to pay their dues to the console manufacturer which is roughly another 30% depending on the method of distribution so lets say they get 167 million there, then you get around 20% pc sales for around 119 million $, here they get almost the full pie (there are payment processing fees, and they are sold through stores too but what ever lets assume 100% digital), so that is a total of 330 million in game sales, if we assume they made an equal amount in merchandise (which I have no idea where they are at) that would be 660 million $ in a year, then we know that from june 2016 to february 2017 the game sold around 15 million copies, so lets say that the revenue in 2016 was around 900 million $ with merchandising, and that in roughly half a year of 2015 they made another 660 million $, that would still leave microsoft around 300 million shy of making their money back, assuming they are making as much of the merchandising as they are on game sales, assuming 2016 was around 36% better than 2017, and that the time they had minecraft in 2015 was as good as the entire 2017, and that they had no costs, and that they paid no taxes on that revenue, and that they sold every single copy at full price.

So really Microsoft hasn't made their money back even doing things way above what they are likely to be in reality, now will they do their money back eventually? Sure. Was it a good purchase? Yeah.
But to do 2 to 3 times what it paid for it, minecraft would have to be pulling profit above any other game out there, and it isn't, stuff like league of legends far surpasses it, even some annual franchises, or ofc even non annual franchises like GTA which are also pulling insane amounts of money, the place where minecraft is truly king in games is not in revenue, but in mindshare among the younger demographic, it is an absolute beast there and the true reason why microsoft bought it in the first place.

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You're completely ignoring where they make most of their money through this game, though. Like others have mentioned, merchandising is HUGE. George Lucas made way, way more from merchandising on Star Wars than he ever did on the movies themselves, for example. Minecraft doesn't do Star Wars levels of merchandising, but it does damn well.

There's also realms and microtransactions. I pay $8 a month for my son's realm so he can play with his buddies. Yeah that's only $96/year, but I'm just one of tens of millions of people paying for a realm.

I don't know why some people are so insistent that MS hasn't made money on this deal. They quite obviously have made out like bandits, better than they possibly could have foreseen.

 

[Micael]

You're completely ignoring where they make most of their money through this game, though. Like others have mentioned, merchandising is HUGE. George Lucas made way, way more from merchandising on Star Wars than he ever did on the movies themselves, for example. Minecraft doesn't do Star Wars levels of merchandising, but it does damn well.

There's also realms and microtransactions. I pay $8 a month for my son's realm so he can play with his buddies. Yeah that's only $96/year, but I'm just one of tens of millions of people paying for a realm.

I don't know why some people are so insistent that MS hasn't made money on this deal. They quite obviously have made out like bandits, better than they possibly could have foreseen.

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Except I literally doubled the amount of money they make through the games (more than that, because they aren't making the revenues I mentioned), so clearly I do not think that they are making most of their money through copies sold.
And once again I didn't take into account any costs, which they sure have, I didn't take into account any possible taxes paid which they sure pay and so on, but if you believe they made 2 or 3 times the investment back and they just haven't told their investors about it, be my guess.

 

[Bax]

I would hate to have to go add up what I have spent on the Franchise over the years... I would probably pass out Michael. I feel you may be fighting a losing battle here.

They are making Bank. As far as reporting if it has made profits. They just lump it in with a division. Microsoft loves to hide shit... 74 million active users a month. It's insane.

To the guys saying make it exclusive. You don't cut the head off the Golden Goose.

If they ever do bring the series to the Big Screen as a quality product, like they were planning. It will make bank there too.

 

[nekkid]

Except I literally doubled the amount of money they make through the games (more than that, because they aren't making the revenues I mentioned), so clearly I do not think that they are making most of their money through copies sold.
And once again I didn't take into account any costs, which they sure have, I didn't take into account any possible taxes paid which they sure pay and so on, but if you believe they made 2 or 3 times the investment back and they just haven't told their investors about it, be my guess.

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To be fair, you shouldn't have made an attempt at some kind of meaningful calculation of ROI, without knowing most of the numbers, if you didn't want people to pick fault with it.

 

[Micael]

To be fair, you shouldn't have made an attempt at some kind of meaningful calculation of ROI, without knowing most of the numbers, if you didn't want people to pick fault with it.

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I don't have a problem with people picking faults with it, as I said I don't have the numbers to make a definitive assessment of it, and in the case of accounting there are so many ways you can look at the numbers you can have a bunch of different takes even with the same numbers, I do however expect people to read the post before saying things like I didn't thought of merchandising, or that I think most of the money comes through the game, or even to heavily imply that I thought they bought it just to make the money back, I feel like if you are going to disagree with someone post you should read it properly, and hopefully present solid arguments to the contrary.
Which I really wouldn't be surprised if I was wrong, but would far prefer to see posts actually doing math on the subject with what ever numbers available we have, since I feel like that adds a lot more to the discussion, than posts going on a circle jerk about it doing X amount of times the ROI back with 0 math to back it up.

 

[Bio]

Except I literally doubled the amount of money they make through the games (more than that, because they aren't making the revenues I mentioned), so clearly I do not think that they are making most of their money through copies sold.
And once again I didn't take into account any costs, which they sure have, I didn't take into account any possible taxes paid which they sure pay and so on, but if you believe they made 2 or 3 times the investment back and they just haven't told their investors about it, be my guess.

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All that really does is tell me that you're just kind of making up the numbers as you go along.

 

[Micael]

All that really does is tell me that you're just kind of making up the numbers as you go along.

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I am, hence why I wrote assumes in my post, my post is not, or ever was meant to be a definitive "this is how much it sold", because I don't have those numbers, it is me doing math on it using a mixture of available numbers, and assumptions on non available numbers, which I do feel is better than just going "Oh yeah this made X amount what they invested".

 

[nekkid]

I don't have a problem with people picking faults with it, as I said I don't have the numbers to make a definitive assessment of it, and in the case of accounting there are so many ways you can look at the numbers you can have a bunch of different takes even with the same numbers, I do however expect people to read the post before saying things like I didn't thought of merchandising, or that I think most of the money comes through the game, or even to heavily imply that I thought they bought it just to make the money back, I feel like if you are going to disagree with someone post you should read it properly, and hopefully present solid arguments to the contrary.
Which I really wouldn't be surprised if I was wrong, but would far prefer to see posts actually doing math on the subject with what ever numbers available we have, since I feel like that adds a lot more to the discussion, than posts going on a circle jerk about it doing X amount of times the ROI back with 0 math to back it up.

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Maths is only worth doing if you have the right numbers, though. Even if you can get close to the right numbers it would help. But if you make a point of looking at the game numbers and price and store cuts, and make a guess at double for merchandising and ignore DLC and subscription fees, that people are going to rip it apart. Even if you have prefaced your assumptions.

FWIW, I agree with your point that it hasn't been double or triple the pay back, it was probably just the wrong way about saying that, that's all.

 

[Deleted member 20297]

I meant also exclusively to XBox. No PC version either! Microsoft shout stop this PlayAnywhere thing with the next XBox. That there are no really exclusive games on the XBox was a bad decision, consoles need exclusive games to sell!

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Oh, that narrative again. Well, they sure are a parameter in the vector why people buy a console. But Minecraft is making so much money everywhere, I don't think locking it to Xbox would do much in terms of convincing buying an Xbox. Minecraft's audience is not Limited to a console concept.

 

[Grain Silo]

I remember playing the crap out of this game when it was in Alpha. I personally think Terraria is a much better game, but Minecraft represents a serious turning point in video games. Even Zelda is taking inspiration from it now.

 

[Micael]

Maths is only worth doing if you have the right numbers, though. Even if you can get close to the right numbers it would help. But if you make a point of looking at the game numbers and price and store cuts, and make a guess at double for merchandising and ignore DLC and subscription fees, that people are going to rip it apart. Even if you have prefaced your assumptions.

FWIW, I agree with your point that it hasn't been double or triple the pay back, it was probably just the wrong way about saying that, that's all.

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I disagree, I feel like it is still worth doing some math even with incomplete numbers to get an idea of potential sales, instead of just looking at copies sold and going well this must have done a billion $ or what ever, like for example before I bothered to do the math I had no idea about the distribution of platforms, now I have some idea, and if I had to bet I am not the only one, and we got examples of how people spend money on minecraft with their kids that we might not have had otherwise.
As long as speculation is backed by something and branded as such (which I believe I did, although judging by the replies I might have fucked that up), I really do think there is value in it

EDITED: For example BIO mentioned star wars merchandising, I would have far preferred a post that correlated how much the star wars franchise did by movie sales, and how much it did in merchandise (or what ever numbers are available there) and correlate that with minecraft, than just saying that star wars did a whole lot more money in merchandise. Would that have gotten us to the real numbers of minecraft? Ofc not, but we would have all learned something.

 

[Guardians]

Oh, that narrative again. Well, they sure are a parameter in the vector why people buy a console. But Minecraft is making so much money everywhere, I don't think locking it to Xbox would do much in terms of convincing buying an Xbox. Minecraft's audience is not Limited to a console concept.

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But without exclusive games that are only available on an XBox Console Microsoft will never again being on the top of the 3 console manufacturer with console sales. Nintendo and Sony will always have an advantage over XBox with their exclusive games.

 

[Guardians]

Reading something like this always baffles me. Microsoft's endgame extends far beyond Xbox hardware. MAUs are what's important, console sales is a mere bonus.

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What does MAU mean? :)

 

[Deleted member 20297]

But without exclusive games that are only available on an XBox Console Microsoft will never again being on the top of the 3 console manufacturer with console sales. Nintendo and Sony will always have an advantage over XBox with their exclusive games.

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In terms of exclusives, yes. If this translates to more sales we don't know. Look at wiiu, no exclusive was able to save that system. What recent sales also showed us was that most games sold are third party games and the public likes cheap systems to buy to play these third party games.

 

[Micael]

What does MAU mean? :)

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Monthly Active Users.

 

[Soony Xbone Uhh]

Mojang AB!!
2012
Revenue: 1.5bn SEK
Profit: 580k SEK

2015
Revenue: 4.3bn SEK
Profit: 1.2bn SEK


As i said the game is snowballing and still selling at a higher pace every year.
This will also affect additional revenue streams and not only game sales.
Revenue growth was 42% yearly on average from 2012 to 2015.
Profit growth was close to 27.5% yearly on average from 2012 to 2015.
So expect the growth to be at least around the same and not slowing down.


Estimates!!
2016
Revenue: 6.1bn SEK
Profit: 1.55bn SEK

2017
Revenue: 8.7bn SEK (~$1.1bn)
Profit: 2bn SEK (~$0.25bn)



It would really surprise me, if Minecraft is not make around a billion $ a year in revenue.
A higher number seems more likely than a lower one.

 

[Guardians]

Monthly Active Users.

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Thanks :) You are right, a game sell more when it's on more different platforms. And as more people buy that game the better! But if you take away exclusive games away from a console, than you taking away a huge selling point from that console. People buy Nintendo consoles and Sony consoles just because or often because of their exclusive games that are only available on that specific platform. With Microsoft starting to release their XBox games also on PC with their PlayAnywhere initiative they hurt the XBox business.

 

[Novocaine]

I remember playing the crap out of this game when it was in Alpha. I personally think Terraria is a much better game, but Minecraft represents a serious turning point in video games. Even Zelda is taking inspiration from it now.

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Same for me. Played hard in alpha/beta and dropped off. But I still go back every now and then. And yeah I like Terraria way more, but it's a different kind of game really.

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

I can't really say for sure. I guess they make more of a profit doing it than not. But considering they release on all their competitors platforms and keep it updated I can't see why they wouldn't continue to do so. Who knows, maybe they will can a PS5 release. My bet is it on getting one though.

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They will tell Sony they get Minecraft on PS5 if they allow cross-play, cross-buy and the rest of it.

 

[Bio]

I am

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Okay well that's kinda totally pointless.

 

[Hindle]

Remember people saying MS acquiring MC was a silly move.

Just goes to show the bubble some are in

 

[ApeEscaper]

This game is sooo dead even with recent updates can't save it from being boring and tired by now

Though this is a must have game for any system like GTA V is anyways

 

[Falchion]

I don't even know who is left to buy this game.

 

[borges]

As in "with no clear end and open-ended content", something that, outside of MMOs, isn't really that common. Even open world games aren't that great with that. Not compared to Minecraft anyway.
Did you assume I was joking based on that specific, admittedly-poorly-phrased bit? Because I was dead serious. Minecraft takes all the supposed truths of the industry and throws it away like the garbage beliefs they are.

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Actually you have a very good point to be honest :)
Just that non linear games was itching me a bit.

 

[Fredrik]

Crazy but still well deserved, I'm not sure which year it was but Microsoft started showing the statistics on Xbox accounts and that year Minecraft was my most played game for the year..

 

[THEVOID]

I don't even know who is left to buy this game.

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Being born everyday.