Minecraft was first released in alpha form back in 2009 but it seems, even after nearly two years, more and more people are discovering the indie PC sandbox game. Earlier this week, the development team at Mojang released the 1.8 update to the game, otherwise known as the Adventure Update, and it seems that has caused sales of Minecraft to actually go beyond its already high sales rate.
The official Minecraft web site has confirmed that on Saturday afternoon ET, the game"s total lifetime sales reached the 3.5 million unit mark. Once more, the game"s official stats page shows that, again as of Saturday afternoon, well over 17,000 copies of the game have been sold in the past 24 hours. That"s above its usual sales average of around 10,000 copies a day. Even that number is still astounding for a indie PC game that basically has no marketing or PR machine behind it, aside from some Twitter and Tumblr updates from the game"s creator Markus "Notch" Persson.
Minecraft looks like it will break the 4 million unit sales mark sometime in late October or early November if it can keep its average daily sales around what it has been for the past year or so. In mid-November Mojang will finally bring Minecraft out of its current beta state with its last content update. Even though the game has been for sale since its alpha version, November will be the time that Minecraft moves into its true commerical form. Mojang will celebrate that occasion by holding its first official MineCon in Las Vegas on November 18-19.