Despite having been what appears to be the most talked about, searched for, and played game of 2018, Fortnite isn’t drawing in the same monthly player numbers as Minecraft. The amount of Minecraft monthly players is mind-boggling, especially when you consider that the game has been out since 2011. Mojang is still bringing them in.
According to PCGamesN, August was Fortnite’s best month yet in terms of player count. Around 78.3 million of us logged in to play Fortnite at least once last month. These are big numbers, but not quite big enough to claim the most popular game of August award. Microsoft released its details on Minecraft monthly players. The number is astronomical.
Minecraft is currently being played at least once by around 91 million people every month. This is the total amount of unique players every month, too, not the total number of times it has been played. To put that in perspective, that’s almost 25 million more people than live in the United Kingdom. Microsoft has shifted over 150 million copies of Minecraft, which is 25 million more than Fortnite has been downloaded. Mojang’s bricky game shows no signs of slowing, either.
A new Minecraft spin-off is in the works. Minecraft Dungeons is set to build on the game’s popularity when it releases on PC next year. A dungeon crawler, Minecraft Dungeons eschews the traditional Minecraft gameplay in favor of a traditional RPG experience. You’ll explore dungeons, fight enemies, and upgrade your character’s skills and equipment. It seems likely too, based on the trailer, that there will be different character classes to choose from. You can see the trailer for Minecraft Dungeons below:
In further news, Microsoft won’t be making a Minecraft 2 any time soon. Helen Chiang, head of Minecraft at Microsoft, wants to keep the community united. “That’s why our updates are free. We don’t want to ask [players] to move from ‘Minecraft 1‘ to ‘Minecraft 2‘.” With the numbers it is still bringing in, too, it’s easy to see why Microsoft might not be too keen on a sequel.
