Big-budget games such as Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II might brag about how they rule the Xbox 360 in terms of sales, but indie games can also compete – if they’re addictive enough and offer enough value. Take Minecraft, an indie game developed by Markus “Notch” Persson’s company Mojang. According to Mojang, Minecraft, an indie game originally made for PC and ported to the Xbox 360 seven months ago has sold 4,476,904 copies as of the end of November with 40,000 to 60,000 copies sold every week. Minecraft is an anomaly because it doesn’t boast high-definition graphics that ooze of detailed lighting effects and didn’t cost millions of dollars to make, and yet it is the third-most played game on Xbox LIVE.
According to Gamasutra’s analysis and breakdown of November’s Xbox Live Arcade sales, only three other indie games managed to break 1 million copies downloaded last month. See below for the chart.
As you can see, every other game on Xbox Live Arcade other than Castle Crashers, Fruit Ninja Kinect, Happy Wars and Counter Strike: GO isn’t seeing the same type of success Minecraft is.
The lesson here is developers should always focus on the product and the users. If the gameplay mechanics are solid, the experience is fluid and bug-free, the gamers will come.