‘Minecraft’ For Xbox 360 Hits 4 Million Sales As Update 1.8.2 Approaches

Markus Persson’s “Minecraft” may be the poster child of indie gaming, but its sales numbers have climbed to a commercial scale. As of Monday, the originally PC-exclusive game has reached 4 million in sales on the Xbox 360 platform.

This achievement comes less than five months after the “Minecraft” Xbox 360 debut. Developer 4J Studios announced the news via Twitter, proving that $20 isn’t too much for Xbox Live Arcade patrons.

“Minecraft” also sits comfortably atop the list of most played games for Xbox Live, competing against widely successful titles such as “Call of Duty,” which will be seeing another installment come November. In addition, “Minecraft” holds the honor of the best-selling arcade title in the Xbox Live Arcade.

While the building-based game from Mojang is seeing a successful Xbox launch, the PC is still the preferred platform. Sales of “Minecraft” for computers are sitting at about 7.5 million, with potential to jump higher given its popularity. This, combined with Xbox sales, puts “Minecraft” at 11.5 million total copies sold. This figure doesn’t include “Minecraft Pocket Edition” for iOS and Android.

Mojang, the Swedish indie developer studio behind the game, is also offering digital download cards for PC editions of “Minecraft” at U.S. retailers. The cards are priced at $26.95, which is the same as a digital download directly from Minecraft.net.

“Minecraft” players will be getting a big update in the coming weeks; update 1.82 is said to introduce the creative mode and numerous bug fixes. 4J Studios announced on Twitter that the update is finished, and now Microsoft must test it before it is officially released.

This landmark for “Minecraft” comes days after Persson, also known as “Notch,” openly criticized Windows 8 on Twitter. Although the game has flourished on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and previous PC platforms, Persson does not want the game coming to Windows 8.

“Got an e-mail from Microsoft wanting to help ‘certify’ Minecraft for Windows 8,” he tweeted on Sept. 27. “I told them to stop trying to ruin the PC as an open platform.”

His issue with the new OS stems from the idea that Microsoft is essentially becoming a closed platform with the introduction of its Windows Store. Persson joins Valve chief Gabe Newell in expressing distaste for Windows 8. He referred to the upcoming software as a “catastrophe” this summer.