Chapter 226: Ten Million Sales (Requesting Subscriptions, Monthly Pass)

Second day of the Lunar New Year

The sales data for Minecraft has been released.

Thanks to the initial promotional efforts—especially the special videos featuring Along the River During the Qingming Festival, the Forbidden City, and even a piano and a calculator—Minecraft gained massive popularity before its official launch.

Combined with its affordable price and a pre-order period that had already started a month earlier, all these factors led to an explosive sales performance.

Minecraft's 24-hour sales: 3,212,231 copies.

First-day sales: 3.2 million copies.

To say it's unprecedented and will never be surpassed might be a bit exaggerated.

But at the very least, it's the best result in recent years.

Although Minecraft's price is only in the double digits and there was some luck involved, there's no denying the staggering 3.2 million first-day sales.

What stunned many industry designers even more was Minecraft's incredible gameplay and the overwhelmingly positive player reviews.

After the Early Access trial ended during the pre-order phase, Minecraft's player rating stood at 9.0—decent, but not extraordinary.

But now, the rating has climbed to an astonishing 9.8.

An unbelievable figure.

Although Minecraft's strong promotional campaign had already broken through to a broader audience—making even non-gamers aware of the game—and early pre-orders led many game industry designers to expect strong first-day sales,

the moment the 3 million figure was revealed, everyone was truly shocked.

"My god, Chen Xu is just too insane! A pixel-style block-building game selling this well?"

"Forget block-building games—does your block game even look like this?"

"It's mainly because Minecraft's promotion was just too powerful!"

"Yeah! First time I've seen a game pull off such an attention-grabbing marketing strategy."

"It's a textbook example of perfect promotion!"

"Impressive as it is, I feel only Minecraft could pull this off—completely unreplicable."

"Exactly. Minecraft could do this because its game mechanism supports it. Regular games trying to copy this approach simply can't succeed."

Industry designers who had been closely following Minecraft couldn't help but sigh with emotion.

Inside TengHua's Voyage project office,

after receiving the news of Minecraft's sales data, Zhu Yi let out a long breath—part relief, part庆幸.

At first, he genuinely wanted to compete head-on with Minecraft, especially after its trial ended.

But due to Minecraft's subsequent overwhelming promotional momentum, he ultimately held back, choosing to delay his own launch—even if it meant wasting previously prepared promotional resources.

Now, looking back, that decision was truly a brilliant move!

After all, the gaming industry is an incredibly unpredictable field.

No one can say for sure what will happen—a highly anticipated blockbuster might suddenly flop, while an indie title might explode overnight and go global.

Such cases happen nearly every year.

And Chen Xu himself had already achieved astonishing results, creating miracles multiple times.

Combined with Minecraft's sky-high popularity and its breathtaking content demonstrations,

Zhu Yi had remained extremely cautious. Now, it was clear—he had made the right call!

In a month, Minecraft's popularity should have cooled down significantly.

By then, launching Voyage would be much safer.

…………………

The gaming industry's attention to Minecraft clearly differed from that of the players.

For players, diving back into Minecraft and experiencing it further, more and more content was being discovered.

From knowing nothing at first, to learning to use Shelter Stone to build furnaces, mastering how to cook food in furnaces, smelt iron ingots, and craft Armor and weapons.

From merely digging holes to hide, to carving out caves and becoming cavemen.

Meanwhile, some players discovered that animals in the game could actually be tamed using food.

As time passed, players gradually uncovered the game's endless fun.

Of course, there were also tragic incidents.

For example, dying in the wilderness with a full inventory of materials, only to never find the death spot and lose everything.

Or painstakingly building a cozy, warm house, venturing into the wild for exploration, and then completely losing their way home—still alive, but essentially dead.

To prevent this, many players built towering structures at home as beacons, or placed directional markers along their paths so they could always find their way back.

But even more devastating was when players spent ages building a home, slept through the night, and upon waking up and opening the door in daylight, found a Creeper squatting right at the entrance—before they could react, the blinding flash and hissing sound had already arrived.

Meanwhile, across各大 community platforms and video sites, posts and videos about Minecraft flooded the platforms.

"First-time Minecraft Experience: Basic Tutorial to Understand How to Play!"

"Dig-three-fill-one, cavemen, Using Local Materials—Which of These Have You Done?"

"Step-by-step Guide: How to Build a Duplex Villa!"

"MC Infrastructure Team: Recreate the Great Wall!"

On major video and community websites, related posts gradually progressed from beginner to advanced.

Initially, most content consisted of beginner tutorials—players who understood the basic rules educating newcomers.

But soon, as players became more familiar with the game, a diverse range of content exploded.

There were hilarious parody videos, skill-oriented building videos, and straightforward strategy guides teaching how to survive better in Survival Mode.

On major live-streaming platforms, Minecraft also sparked a huge wave of popularity, with many game streamers casually playing it during downtime.

But even more common were countless players enjoying the game in their own preferred styles.

Some treated it purely as a pixel-style block-building game, opening Creative Mode or joining Peaceful Pure Server to build Structures together with like-minded players.

Others treated it as a Survival Adventure Game, collecting resources in Survival Mode and cautiously exploring the unknown.

Some saw it as a unique multiplayer experience, forming groups in multiplayer mode and developing aggressively.

Still others treated it as a tourism game, marveling at the grand Structures created by Chen Xu and other players.

Of course, online disputes were inevitable—some well-intentioned players opened public servers without protection, only to have their creations maliciously destroyed by others.

There are bad people among any crowd!

But compared to other games, Minecraft had the least hostility of any.

Even its multiplayer mode, which had the highest potential for conflict, remained far more harmonious than other games.

Chen Xu himself didn't pay much attention to this.

Where there are people, there is a community. Let players handle player issues.

………………

As time passed, third-party organizations soon released Minecraft's subsequent sales data.

First-week sales: 10.12 million copies. Weekly active users: 8.62 million.

Although everyone could clearly feel Minecraft's popularity during this period,

the moment these numbers were revealed, everyone was stunned.

What? Over 10 million copies sold in the first week—and weekly active users actually reached 8.62 million?

What kind of monster is this?

For heavily promoted games, first-day sales often account for the majority—even half—of total sales.

But this rule seemed to fail completely with Minecraft.

Because its sales trend was just too stable.

Inside NetDragon and TengHua's studios—though not together—Meng Zuo and Zhu Yi both stared at Minecraft's data, each momentarily doubting life itself.

Especially Zhu Yi, who had originally planned to launch Voyage one month after Minecraft's release.

He'd already figured out how to promote it with minimal budget.

But now, Minecraft's ever-rising popularity had completely terrified him.

He knew Minecraft's sales would be terrifying—but the ten million first-week sales still left him stunned.

Despite Minecraft's low price, this was only the first week!

And judging by current trends, its popularity showed no signs of cooling down—exceeding even Fall Guys' hype at its peak.

At this rate, wouldn't Minecraft become the best-selling game in history?

And Minecraft's so-called sandbox gameplay was completely different from what the gaming industry had discussed as the core!

In that instant, he felt a flicker of uncertainty.

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