It was only five days ago when we reported about Mojang releasing the first post-launch update for Minecraft since the game released in full, dropping its beta status in November. At the time of that writing last week, I made a point of highlighting that exactly 19,802,2345 users had registered for Minecraft accounts.
The release of the 1.1 update must have been a big success when it released on January 12, 2012, as not but two days later Minecraft creator Notch took to Twitter to share the news that the game has surpassed the 20 million mark of registered users.
20 million people around the world have signed up an account to play Minecraft and when you look at how young it, its mobile versions are, and how the upcoming XBLA version hasn't even released yet, there are a lot more players on the way. Keep in mind, this registered user account is not representative of unit sales. At the time of this writing, the official Minecraft website reveals that 4,671,485 people have bought the game.
"Minecraft now has 20 million registered users. At 70 kg each, that's 25% of the weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza."
With Mojang expanding thanks to the success of their flagship game, they've been able to focus development on their second game, Scrolls, while also beginning work as a third party publisher of other indie games, their first being Cobalt, currently in alpha. We also found out recently that Mojang has three other unannounced games in the works, two of which will be released, if not, unveiled in the first half of this year.
So what's in store for the future of Minecraft? It's not behind left behind. As followers of the Mojang crew on Twitter and Reddit know, Notch passed the torch to Jens “Jeb” Bergensten, making him the lead developer of Minecraft, where he's assisted by new Mojang hire Jon Kagstrom. The game should see updates as it did before while it was in beta.
There are also a ton of Minecraft clones in development (see: FortressCraft), which we'd like to think will help push Mojang to keep innovating and improving the title.
Minecraft is currently available on PC and Mac with the Pocket Edition available on iOS and Android devices.
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Source: Notch