'Minecraft' Game Reaches 15 Million Copies In PC Sales, Approaching 50 Million Overall

“Minecraft’s” PC version has sold more than 15 million copies, with its total sales approaching 50 million.

“The original ‘Minecraft’ has sold 15 million copies! Time to celebrate!” Sweden-born developer Markus Persson, 34, tweeted on Wednesday.

Last week, it was announced Mojang’s 2009 indie game, Minecraft, will come to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita sometime during the third quarter of 2014.

Chief Word Officer Owen Hill announced a PS3 disc version of the sandbox title earlier this month on the PlayStation blog. Though “Minecraft” has been available for download on the PlayStation 3 since last year, a physical copy of the popular game will hit shelves on May 14 in Europe and Australia. Hill said the port will be “up to date with the console versions” and that he expects the frame rate to be “lovely and smooth.”

On April 24, Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, confirmed that the upcoming Xbox One version of “Minecraft” will be backward compatible with the Xbox 360 version of the game.

“After months of teaming up with Mojang, we can confirm that the Minecraft X360 Edition will save transfer to Xbox One Edition ... more news soon,” Spencer announced to more than 40,000 thousand followers.

“Minecraft” launched its alpha version in May 2009 for the PC and was developed by Swedish programmer Persson, who is known as simply “Notch” in the gaming realm. On Jan. 11, 2011, “Minecraft” surpassed 1 million purchases, less than 30 days after launching its beta. A full version launched on Nov. 18, 2011, along with an iPhone version. “Minecraft” hit Android phones one month earlier on Oct. 7.

In May 2012, “Minecraft” was launched on the Xbox 360 and was developed by 4J Studios.

The title won five awards from the 2011 Game Developers Conference, including the Innovation Award, Best Downloadable Game Award and the Best Debut Game Award. As of February this year, the title has sold more than 14 million copies on PC and over 35 million copies across all platforms.

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