Minecraft XBLA Reaches Profitability in an Hour, Shatters Day One Sales Records

Tweeted out by Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson yesterday and mentioned by Major Nelson soon after, the port of Minecraft over to Xbox Live Arcade appears to have been nothing short of a smashing commercial success.

Zooming by Trials Evolution, who only a few weeks ago destroyed the Xbox Live Arcade record for most sales in one day, Minecraft is as popular as hot cakes — with over 400,000 people playing in its first day.

While the sales numbers Notch mentioned were seemingly actual sales numbers, it later turned out that the statistics were based off of leader board participation, which showed over 400,000 people playing. This was brought to light by Polytron, creators of Indie darling Fez, when they prompted Notch on his calculation methods.

Also, Polytron made it clear that this situation is, in fact, a scandal.

The port was made by 4J Studios, who took an earlier version of Minecraft and crafted it to work on the Xbox 360. While the build is considerably old (approximately beta 1.6 in terms of PC equivalence), the charm of the game is still alive and well in this version, from my hours of experience fiddling with it yesterday.

The game will be receiving free updates going forward – “something every other developer on the platform is told is simply not an option,” said Polytron.

Notch did mention that they had to fight for that right, and that they only get a limited number of them.

In joint-news, someone made a Fez Texture Pack for Minecraft. Yeah.