At this point it’s safe to say that the Xbox Live Arcade iteration of Minecraft is a success. This is a game that was released in May of last year yet was still capable of selling 453,000 copies on Christmas Day alone. Then, this morning, developer 4JStudios tweeted the following: On New Year’s Eve 2012, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition passed 5 million sales! On average, that’s roughly 714,000 copies sold each month since its debut; more copies in a single month than most Xbox Live Arcade games will ever sell. Given the $20 price tag attached to Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, the game has been generating $14,280,000 each month for a total haul of about $100,000,000 so far. Of course, that’s all before figuring in the amount of cash generated by the game’s various DLC additions. All in all, it’s doing very well for an indie game with the visual fidelity of an early Nintendo 64 title. Despite this new milestone, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition lags far behind its PC/Mac analogue. That game boasts more than nine million copies sold to date. On the other hand, it’s also been available for years, while the Xbox Live arcade game has only be on the market for months. Xbox Live gamers suffer for this as the content found in the Xbox Live game lags months far the content in the PC/Mac game, yet it appears that when given the option people seem to prefer playing Minecraft on an HDTV from the comfort of their couch over staring at a computer screen and tapping away at a keyboard. Whichever iteration of Minecraft you prefer, the best news in all of this is that the game’s massive sales stats effectively guarantee that Mojang and 4JStudios will continue to build more and more content for their respective versions of Minecraft. That’s doubly sweet news given that neither the Xbox Live nor PC/Mac incarnations of the game require players to pay for new content. We have no idea when the success of Minecraft will start to wane, but in the meantime we’re more than willing to enjoy the fruits it bears. Especially when said fruits allow us to breed animals and fight dinosaurs alongside our ugly, blocky huts. What makes a great video game console? It’s a bit of an existential question. It’s much easier to discuss what makes a great video game, as they can be dissected as communicative artworks. A video game console is different. It’s a hunk of plastic that plays those games. In our modern era, those devices have become more and more homogenized. An Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 have roughly the same features and even share a large library of games. What really differentiates one from the other? Is it the shape of a controller? A handful of good exclusives? Minecraft is a force of nature that nearly every single person over the age of 15 has either played or watched on YouTube, and its creator, Markus Persson (better known as Notch), said he has “basically announced” Minecraft 2, or at least a game in a similar vein. Shortly after the turn of the New Year, Notch posted a survey on X asking fans what type of game they would like to see him make next. The options were Minecraft 2 or a retro-inspired roguelike. Nearly a quarter of a million people voted, with the unsurprising majority asking for Minecraft 2. Remember your Xbox Avatar? Well, your ability to change them up is going away soon. Xbox quietly announced that it’s shutting down the Xbox Avatar Editor early next year, and therefore, basically all Xbox Avatar functionality. Microsoft wrote on an Xbox Support page (spotted by Pure Xbox) that it’s sunsetting the app, which let you create and customize an avatar with items you could buy in the Xbox Store, on January 9, 2025, due to “low engagement” and the need to shift its priorities to other projects.

At this point it’s safe to say that the Xbox Live Arcade iteration of Minecraft is a success. This is a game that was released in May of last year yet was still capable of selling 453,000 copies on Christmas Day alone. Then, this morning, developer 4JStudios tweeted the following: On New Year’s Eve 2012, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition passed 5 million sales! On average, that’s roughly 714,000 copies sold each month since its debut; more copies in a single month than most Xbox Live Arcade games will ever sell. Given the $20 price tag attached to Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, the game has been generating $14,280,000 each month for a total haul of about $100,000,000 so far. Of course, that’s all before figuring in the amount of cash generated by the game’s various DLC additions. All in all, it’s doing very well for an indie game with the visual fidelity of an early Nintendo 64 title. Despite this new milestone, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition lags far behind its PC/Mac analogue. That game boasts more than nine million copies sold to date. On the other hand, it’s also been available for years, while the Xbox Live arcade game has only be on the market for months. Xbox Live gamers suffer for this as the content found in the Xbox Live game lags months far the content in the PC/Mac game, yet it appears that when given the option people seem to prefer playing Minecraft on an HDTV from the comfort of their couch over staring at a computer screen and tapping away at a keyboard. Whichever iteration of Minecraft you prefer, the best news in all of this is that the game’s massive sales stats effectively guarantee that Mojang and 4JStudios will continue to build more and more content for their respective versions of Minecraft. That’s doubly sweet news given that neither the Xbox Live nor PC/Mac incarnations of the game require players to pay for new content. We have no idea when the success of Minecraft will start to wane, but in the meantime we’re more than willing to enjoy the fruits it bears. Especially when said fruits allow us to breed animals and fight dinosaurs alongside our ugly, blocky huts. What makes a great video game console? It’s a bit of an existential question. It’s much easier to discuss what makes a great video game, as they can be dissected as communicative artworks. A video game console is different. It’s a hunk of plastic that plays those games. In our modern era, those devices have become more and more homogenized. An Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 have roughly the same features and even share a large library of games. What really differentiates one from the other? Is it the shape of a controller? A handful of good exclusives? Minecraft is a force of nature that nearly every single person over the age of 15 has either played or watched on YouTube, and its creator, Markus Persson (better known as Notch), said he has “basically announced” Minecraft 2, or at least a game in a similar vein. Shortly after the turn of the New Year, Notch posted a survey on X asking fans what type of game they would like to see him make next. The options were Minecraft 2 or a retro-inspired roguelike. Nearly a quarter of a million people voted, with the unsurprising majority asking for Minecraft 2. Remember your Xbox Avatar? Well, your ability to change them up is going away soon. Xbox quietly announced that it’s shutting down the Xbox Avatar Editor early next year, and therefore, basically all Xbox Avatar functionality. Microsoft wrote on an Xbox Support page (spotted by Pure Xbox) that it’s sunsetting the app, which let you create and customize an avatar with items you could buy in the Xbox Store, on January 9, 2025, due to “low engagement” and the need to shift its priorities to other projects.