Minecraft Franchise Facts and Sales October 2018

It would seem that Minecraft is growing even more rapidly as it expands its content across additional devices. While they haven't updated this listing in awhile, I'm surprised it's being released prior to the end of the year. I've listed highlights below and went further to note how these numbers compare to when I last did this franchise facts write-up in one of the earlier months of the year. That month was March, so it has been awhile. That's right, the game has seen a really large jump in sales and we'll have an end of year follow-up comparison to see the tracking overall. I've included a bolded note for the original statistics from the previous article.

By the Numbers
-Minecraft has sold more than 154 million (from 144 million) copies to date to players from virtually every country in the world.
-More people are playing Minecraft than ever before, every month 91+ million (from 74+ million) unique Minecraft players engage across all platforms.
-In 2016, Minecraft averaged over 53,000 units sold every day, and was the eighth best-selling video game of the year.
-The average Minecraft player age is 24 (U.S.)
-Minecraft is the best-selling PC game of all time, and also one of the highest rated (93 Metascore)

-Minecraft is the No. 1 most viewed game on YouTube and in 2014 was the second most searched term on the site overall after “music”
-More than 160 million people have watched more than 5 billion hours of Minecraft video content on YouTube.
-There were 50 billion views of Minecraft online video content in the past year.
-The Minecraft “Togetherness ACTIVATED!” YouTube ad for the Better Together Update placed #6 on YouTube’s list of top game-trailer ads of 2017, garnering over 11.8 million views.
-51 percent of U.S. children aged 9-11 play Minecraft
-90 percent of the U.S. online population is aware of the Minecraft brand
-About ¾ (77 percent) of the U.S. general online population age 8-65 has heard of Minecraft.
-Minecraft received the Double Platinum PlayStation Award for exceeding 2 million in sales on PlayStation Platforms in Japan, with only 13 other titles receiving this award since 1995. Minecraft has been the only game developed and published by a non-Japanese company to receive the award.

These were yet again impressive details about the game on a global and United States scale, the game is rolling from its Bedrock update that brought cross-play, a community store and a refined experience to most platforms. This was boosted by the addition of the Nintendo Switch to the "Bedrock" edition and further niche releases. The Minecraft Xbox One X enhanced version with 4k HDR visuals is still "in development".

We'll follow up with any changes in the future, though with 10 million (gain last was 22 million) more users and 17 million (gain last was 19 million) more unique engaged players is absolutely massive. Direct comparisons being made to the March 2018 news article and that was in comparison to a first week January 2018 news article. For more details and coverage on the game check out our Minecraft Hub below.

Read our Minecraft Nintendo Switch Review
View our Minecraft Hub