Minecraft: Pocket Edition Breaks 30 Million Downloads - The UpStream

Microsoft acquiring Minecraft has definitely caused a small rift in the gaming community. Some thought this meant the Mojang studio was selling out, while others believed this could mean bigger and better things for the game. Luckily, Microsoft is fully committed to Minecraft and has been pushing it towards mobile devices with full force. The game has still grown since the purchase, too, with Minecraft breaking yet another record.

First, the record. Minecraft already owns a number of Guinness World Records, including the largest indie game convention, the first country modeled at full-scale in a video game, the most popular beta game and the most-played Xbox Live game. Now, sales have been so big for the game that it's earned the right to be called the best-selling indie game at over 16 million units. Pretty impressive stuff, and I only see more records in Minecraft's future.

Switching over to mobile, as Microsoft promised, there is no change on the commitment to getting more people on board with Minecraft: Pocket Edition. At only $7 on iOS, Android, Kindle Fire and Windows Phone, the title has now eclipsed 30 million downloads, which is a remarkable number for a paid mobile game.

Mojang's blog post included some humor, mentioning that 30 million is bigger than Texas, 23 times hotter than the sun in summer time and is more than the observable universe, because science and math and stuff. More importantly, the 30 million downloads more than justifies Microsoft $2.5 billion purchase for the franchise. Clearly, the Minecraft machine is showing no signs of slowing down, and with full support being passed down to the mobile version of the game, the money train won't be stopping any time soon.

It should be noted here that these sales now place Minecraft: Pocket Edition as the second highest-grossing iOS game worldwide, well ahead of popular titles like Game of War and Candy Crush Saga. For comparison, 18 million copies of Minecraft have been sold for the PC, over 12 million for the Xbox 360, 1 million for the PS3 and 100,000 for the Vita. Mojang did not create the console edition themselves, and instead, licensed the title out to 4J Studios.