the history of minecraft

Minecraft is a sandbox independent video game originally created by Swedish programmer Markus "Notch" Persson and later developed and published by the Swedish company Mojang. The creative and building aspects of Minecraft enable players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3Dprocedurally generated world. Other activities in the game include exploration, resource gathering, crafting, and combat. Multiple gameplay modes are available, includingsurvival modes where the player must acquire resources to build the world and maintain health, a creative mode where players have unlimited resources to build with and the ability to fly, and an adventure mode where players play custom maps created by other players. The PC version of the game is renowned for its third-party mods, which add various new items, characters and quests to the game.

The alpha version was publicly released forPC on May 17, 2009, and after gradual updates, the full version was released on November 18, 2011. A version for Androidwas released a month earlier on October 7, and an iOS version was released on November 17, 2011. The game was released on the Xbox 360 as an Xbox Live Arcadegame on May 9, 2012; on the PlayStation 3 on December 17, 2013; on the PlayStation 4 on September 4, 2014; on the Xbox One the next day; and on the PlayStation Vita on October 14, 2014. On December 10, 2014, a Windows Phone version was released.[13] All versions ofMinecraft receive periodic updates, with the console editions being co-developed by 4J Studios.

Minecraft received five awards during the 2011 Game Developers Conference. Of theGame Developers Choice Awards, it won the Innovation Award, Best Downloadable Game Award, and Best Debut Game Award; from theIndependent Games Festival, it won the Audience Award and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. In 2012, Minecraft was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the category Best Downloadable Game. As of June 2015, over 70 million copies have been sold, including 20 million between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One and 20 million on PC,[14] making it the best-selling PC game to date and the third best-selling video game of all time. On September 15, 2014, Microsoft announced a deal to buy Mojang and the ownership of the Minecraftintellectual property for US$2.5 billion; the acquisition was completed on November 6, 2014.