MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Mojang CEO Carl Manneh has revealed the Minecraft developer brought in revenue of nearly $240m last year.
In an interview translated by GI.biz, Manneh explained how the total (which included $100m from license fees) was still difficult to comprehend for the independent developer.
"It’s almost hard to grasp," said Manneh. "It’s easy to become a bit blind working at Mojang. Everything’s happening so fast and it’s going so well. One almost needs to pinch oneself to know it’s for real.
"When we started Mojang in 2010 we made a budget for the first year. Three months later we just trashed it – it became totally irrelevant. We still have the same feeling now. There simply are no good ways to forecast how much money we are going to make.”
Despite all of Minecraft’s success, Manneh believes there is potential for future growth in a number of global markets – specifically mentioning Brazil as a major focus. The country is Minecraft’s third largest territory in terms of number of players, but the lack of credit cards makes it a difficult market for online monetization.
"Minecraft is a power of its own now – it’s just rolling. We have so many markets where we are not very strong yet, where many play Minecraft but few have bought it simply because you can’t use our online payment solution there. That’s something we’ll get our hands to during 2013."
