By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.
Minecraft already has the distinction of being the bestselling video game of all time. Today, it adds more down to that particular feather in its cap with the announcement that it has sold a staggering 300 million copies.
“As we approach the 15th anniversary, Minecraft remains one of the best-selling games of all time, with over 300 million copies sold, a milestone no one could have dreamed of when we were all placing our first blocks,” Helen Chiang, head of Mojang Studios, said in a statement.
The new milestone was announced during Minecraft Live 2023, a Minecraft livestream event that shares news and community updates and features a neat voting event in which players can vote on which new creature should be added to the game. This year, your choices are between a crab, an armadillo, and a penguin. Personally, I voted for the penguin because it’s cute.
Three hundred million copies of Minecraft is nothing to sneeze at, eclipsing sales of just about every other piece of entertainment media since we started keeping track. To put it in perspective, Thriller, the bestselling album of all time, has sold around 70 million copies. The bestselling console, the PS2, sold around 155 million units. Even the second bestselling video game of all time, Grand Theft Auto V, doesn’t even come close to Minecraft’s numbers, topping out at 185 million reported sales. Minecraft is in a class of its own and will likely remain there for a very long time — or at least until Half-Life 3 comes out.
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