Last week was undeniably a pretty darn big one for Minecraft. The massively popular creation/survival sandbox game celebrated its tenth anniversary will a well-deserved amount of fanfare, but it looks like that wasn’t the only milestone the Mojang title hit.
In the midst of all the anniversary celebrations, a special post on the official Minecraft site from creative director Saxs Persson revealed the game has now sold 176 million copies worldwide, meaning it might now be the best selling game of all time.
Persson wrote:
This is an incredibly exciting time for Minecraft. Ten years ago today, the game launched on PC. Now, Minecraft has sold more than 176 million copies to-date in virtually every country in the world.
This meaty figure takes into account copies of Minecraft sold on every console and mobile device since launch, which is pretty much all of them. As it happens, it now looks like the game might have finally knocked Tetris off the top spot in terms of sales numbers, but it hasn’t yet been properly confirmed.
As of 2014, Tetris had reportedly sold 170 million copies. The issue is that this number has undoubtedly risen in the last five years, though nobody has managed to get hold of an accurate updated figure for the black based puzzle game just yet, meaning Minecraft might have beaten Tetris – we just aren’t sure right now.
I want to say that it’s unlikely that Tetris has shifted over six million copies in the last five years, but… well, it’s Tetris. People lose their minds over it, don’t they? And for good reason, it is one of the most versatile, simple, and addictive titles of all time.
Meanwhile, Grand Theft Auto V is fast catching up to both Tetris and Minecraft. The game is currently the third best selling title of all time, and Rockstar recently confirmed it just passed the 110 million mark, since releasing in 2013, shifting an astonishing 10 million in the last six months alone.
In other news, Microsoft recently announced the ambitious looking augmented reality game Minecraft Earth, which looks to combine the real world interaction of Pokemon GO with the block building fun of Minecraft.
I can already tell it’s going to be ridiculously big, especially since it’s going to be free to play.
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via stories@unilad.co.uk
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.