It seems Minecraft fans and Roblox fans don’t always get along.
They tend to think their game of choice is better than the other, and they are stubborn
about it at times.
You might have seen one particular Minecraft vs Roblox animation, which has now garnered
over 3 million views on YouTube.
Here are some lyrics to a Minecraft vs Roblox song.
“You were always playing ROBLOX.
You were always playing Minecraft.
How will we ever get this together?.
Playing different game franchises, the other one despises.”
Is it really all that bad?
Well, it seems some people do like playing both games, but as we said, there is also
a rivalry going on.
Today we’ll look at how the games do in a match-up against each other.
We’ll start with Minecraft, a game that’s been called the grandfather of sandbox gaming.
We won’t give you a complete history as we’ve been through that before, but will
explain at least how it got going.
It was developed by a Swedish guy called Markus Persson.
He was huge on gaming, but was looking for something a little different.
Do you know how much he sold the alpha version for?
The answer is $13.
The game soon took off, and not long after Persson quit his day job and started the company
Mojang.
In 2014, he sold the game to Microsoft, who wanted the company and the intellectual rights.
This soon led to the magazine Forbes putting the young Swede on the list of the world’s
billionaires.
That tells you just how many people loved his creation.
It’s kind of funny now that when he sold his first few versions he was ecstatic that
he saw 150 dollars in his PayPal account.
He said in later interviews that he never expected to be rich in his life.
Roblox doesn’t have the same awe-inspiring romantic fairytale background.
You could say, though, that a lot of effort and time went into creating this game.
In fact, the earliest development of it goes right back to the 1990s, but it wasn’t until
much later that it was released as Roblox.
The two creators were called David Baszucki and Erik Cassel and on April 6th, 2006, they
released Roblox, formerly called Dynablox, to the public.
By November the game had 1,000 signed up players.
In December that grew to 10,000 users, and within a year that number was 100,000 users.
That’s all history, and what we want to know is how do the games stand against each
other now?
Ok, let’s start with Minecraft, a game we haven’t talked about for a while so we’ll
let you know that by the middle of 2018 it had an astounding 91 million active players
monthly.
But that hasn’t changed much, and if you look at lists of games with the most active
monthly players you’ll find today Minecraft still has around 91 million active monthly
players.
Just so you know, it was fourth on the list.
In front of Minecraft were League of Legends, Pokemon Go and way out in front, PlayerUnknown's
Battlegrounds.
Guess which game was right behind Minecraft, and we mean right behind?
Yep, it was Roblox which today is said to have around 90 million active monthly players.
In this respect, we could call the games neck-and-neck.
Minecraft can take one of the biggest accolades in gaming, though, because it’s the best
selling game of all time.
It’s said to have sold over 176,000,000 copies.
Roblox is different in this respect as it’s completely free.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t make any money of course.
In Roblox you can purchase virtual currency for in-game upgrades or accessories for avatars.
People can also buy a “Builders Club” membership, and that offers special privileges
such as getting your hands on premium items for better avatars, getting rid of advertisements,
and getting an item trading system.
What does all this mean in terms of making money?
It’s hard to say just how much cash Microsoft has made from Minecraft.
The company bought Mojang for a cool $2.5 billion, so that was, to say the least, quite
the expenditure.
But when you consider the number of copies sold and the going price right now of $26.95,
a lot of money is being made.
For the last few years you might have paid between 20 and 30 bucks for the PC version
and console version.
Microsoft also made money from things such as selling skin packs for Minecraft and as
we speak new versions of Minecraft are being developed by Mojang.
Microsoft hasn’t released an exact figure, but some people have done the math and come
up with the number 1.65 billion dollars.
That’s what Microsoft might have made so far, but let us tell you this is a very rough
estimate.
Some sources also tell us that the net worth of Minecraft right now is in the region of
$1.7 billion.
Now let’s also remember that a lot of the media back in the day said Microsoft was crazy
for paying so much for Mojang, but seeing as the company is just getting stronger and
the cash keeps piling in, perhaps Microsoft made the right decision.
What about Roblox?
In 2019, reports told us that Roblox has grossed $700 million globally on mobile alone.
That’s from the start.
The website Think Gaming tells us that the mobile game overall has a revenue of $1,554,586
daily.
But again, as for how much the game has made in total it is very confusing.
Even if we look at net worth estimates they differ from source to source.
One source tells us that Roblox for web has a net worth of just over $1.6 billion, while
late in 2018 Variety reported that Roblox the company was worth in total $2.5 billion,
which would make it more valuable than Minecraft.
There seems to be very little between them, and all we can say is that both games are
pulling in lots and lots of money.
One of the big differences in the games is the astounding amount of money developers
have earned in Roblox, though of course the company takes a cut of this.
It was reported that in 2018 in total developers in the game made over $70 million.
One of the selling points of Roblox is that young people have an incentive to learn coding.
They can do well from creating games in the game.
Business Insider wrote in that year, “One top creator cleared $3 million in earnings,
while two more claimed $2 million.”
Lots of others earned thousands of dollars, which is a really big incentive to get writing
code.
Minecraft doesn’t have such an incentive, but there is the Minecraft Marketplace where
creators can sell content they have made.
We are not sure how much Microsoft has paid to creators in total, but reports in 2018
said that in a few months the company had paid out $7 million to 45 Minecraft content
creators.
It also takes a cut from what those creators earn.
This is quite different, though, from Roblox, that reported in 2019 that in 2018 over 300,000
new games were published on Roblox.
It also wrote this, “Under a Creative Commons license, we built out an educational curriculum
that reached over 48,000 students across 22 countries in 2018.”
So, while Minecraft no doubt is a good educational tool, Roblox can really get young people making
money fast.
As for which game is better, well, as we said at the start both games have their fans.
You could say that Minecraft is better for lonesome virtual adventurers who enjoy going
on their own way.
Minecraft has multiplayer options, but Roblox was made to be a social game.
As we have said before, the social environment could be seen as a personality building exercise
for players, although parents have raised concerns because a lot of strange stuff has
been created in the game which you could say is definitely not child friendly.
Those hidden dangers have been well-documented, and Roblox is trying to weed out all the dark
things in the game, not always with success.
As the BBC pointed out in 2019, one parent said, “I thought he was playing an innocent
game” only to discover her child had seen things a child should not see.
The parent described what she saw as “horrifying”, saying it made her feel “physically sick.”
With that in mind, you could say the solitariness of Minecraft isn’t a bad thing, especially
for the parents.
We should say that Roblox has been quick to ban players who have created such content
and it’s not as if it waits around every corner.
So, in terms of social aspects and learning coding, you’d have to say Roblox is the
game of choice.
If you’re a parent, you’ll just have to take Roblox’s word for it that its human
moderators are policing the game and they will keep it child-friendly.
While Minecraft might miss that social element for the most part, some kids just aren’t
social creatures and as creatives they can really succeed in this game.
They can be the masters of their own domain, builders of worlds, rulers of virtual kingdoms,
and that in itself is a great thing.
It really depends on what kids want to do, but we think both games can provide a great
educational experience.
Both games can promote collaboration, problem solving, math skills, thinking and reasoning.
Both games promote creativity.
So yes, we won’t tell you which we think is the better game in this respect.
What we will do now is look at some forums and see what the players are saying.
The question was asked on one forum just lately in 2019, and here is what people said.
Well, firstly people said as we have, that they are similar but not the same.
One thing people pointed out is that while Roblox is free, you need an internet connection
to play it.
While Minecraft you can of course play it without a connection, but for a price.
Another person said that in Roblox you can find much higher quality games to play, but
thy are still quite simple.
Minecraft is just more basic.
As one person said, “chunky” Minecraft has a lot of things to do in the game, but
Roblox just has so much more.
Most people we found had very positive things to say about both games, but something often
said in the negative about Roblox was the fact bots are everywhere and that’s something
to watch out for.
In fact, this seems to bug quite a lot of people.
We think we’ve said about all that we can say now, so the only thing to do is ask you
guys which you think is the best game.
We’d love to hear from people who have spent a considerable amount of time playing both
games.
So, tell us what you think in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video Ninja vs Average Player (You) on Fortnite
Battle Royale.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.
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