Minecraft's sales dominance on Xbox Live Arcade continues, selling an average of over 17,000 copies of the creativity-oriented sandbox game per day since its launch on May 9. Developer Mojang is currently on track to double its profits of £5.5 million ($8.6 million) from last year. Mojang's total revenue last year was £52 million ($81 million), though £40 million ($62.7 million) of that went back into founder Markus Persson's company Notch Development. This year, Mojang expects to keep a larger portion of the revenue from Minecraft sales.

While this is obviously great news if you're Mojang of beloved Minecraft creator Notch, what it means for the gaming industry is a bit less clear. Mojang employs only 16 people to work regularly on Minecraft, a tiny fraction of the total number of staffers that work on AAA titles like Skyrim or Battlefield 3. While bigger games pull in more revenue, Minecraft's tiny development team makes its return on investment absurdly high compared to almost any other game you'd care to name. So are games like Minecraft the future of the games industry, or is it simply a successful exception to the rule?

SOURCE: GamesIndustry