Why there won’t be a ‘Minecraft 2,’ according to Microsoft and Mojang

Microsoft/Mojang

• With over 150 million copies sold, and over 90 million
  monthly active players, “Minecraft” continues to
  dominate.
• Microsoft paid $2.5 billion for “Minecraft” back in
  2014, and the game has grown tremendously since then.
• Microsoft is looking to expand the universe of
  “Minecraft” with new games — and even announced one — but isn’t
  looking to create a sequel, according to Microsoft’s head of
  “Minecraft,” Helen Chiang.

Nearly 100 million
people are playing “Minecraft” every month, and over 150
million copies of the game have been sold. It’s the second
highest-selling game of all time, just below “Tetris.” 

With all that success, it’s fair to assume that Microsoft might
be interested in churning out sequels — the lifeblood of the
entertainment industry. After all, Microsoft paid $2.5 billion
for “Minecraft.” It’s realistic to expect new games from a
property that cost so much to buy.

Not so, says Microsoft.

“I really don’t think that makes sense for ‘Minecraft,’ given the
community,” Helen Chiang, head of “Minecraft” at Microsoft, told
Business Insider in a phone interview. “It’s something that
always fractures the community.”

In “Minecraft” on Nintendo platforms, players can dress
up as “Super Mario” characters and build
together.
Nintendo

Chiang was speaking to the community-driven approach “Minecraft”
has always taken, ever since its first days as a PC-only
work-in-progress. Many of its 91 million-plus monthly players are
playing together, exploring mines and crafting in groups.

That’s part of the reason why the first new “Minecraft” game from
Microsoft isn’t “Minecraft 2.”

Instead, the game is called “Minecraft: Dungeons,” and it’s a
dungeon crawler game — along the lines of “Diablo” — set in the
“Minecraft” universe. It was
revealed over the weekend during a livestreamed fan event,
known as “Minecon Earth.” The game’s being created by a group
within Mojang, the Swedish game studio that was created to
develop “Minecraft.”

One glimpse of “Dungeons” offers a strong clue of what to expect:

“Minecraft: Dungeons” is the first new “Minecraft” game
from the folks who created the first game.
Mojang/Microsoft

Though the game looks distinctly like the original
“Minecraft,” it doesn’t contain the signature elements: Don’t
expect to mine and/or craft very much.

“I would say that it’s a distilled version of ‘Minecraft’ in the
sense that we wanted to focus on making sure that we made the
dungeon crawler part as good as possible,” Mojang creative lead
Jens Bergentsen told Business Insider in a phone interview.
“Building in the game is something that we’ve talked about a lot,
but we were concerned that it would distract from what the game
was about. So in ‘Minecraft: Dungeons,’ it’s strictly an
adventure game with a story attached to it.”

That’s right: A “Minecraft” game without building.
Madness!

It’s these type of “Minecraft” games, like “Dungeons,” that
Microsoft is interested in creating. 

“The way that we’ve decided to expand — and I think ‘Dungeons’ is
the first example of that — is a way that we’re trying to keep
our community together,” Chiang said. “That’s why our updates our
free. We don’t want to ask [players] to move from ‘Minecraft 1’
to ‘Minecraft 2.’ We want them to just enjoy ‘Minecraft.’ And
there’s other ways that we can expand that are more meaningful
and authentic to what we want to be, rather than just releasing
another iteration in the way that most other franchises do.”

“Minecraft” got a major
visual overhaul with the “Super Duper Graphics” pack — a free
update for Xbox One X and PC players.
Microsoft

Beyond the community reasons, there’s another, perhaps more
obvious reason that a sequel to “Minecraft” doesn’t make a lot of
sense: What would that game even be? Does it need to exist?

“I don’t think there’s really a need for ‘Minecraft 2’,”
Bergentsen told me. “You would be able to create a ‘Minecraft 2’
game in ‘Minecraft.'” 

That fact, along with the continued strong sales of the original
game, make a strong argument.