141: Chapter 141, PS version released, sales surpass 20 million!

A few days later, the ps version of Minecraft was officially released.

At 10:00 AM that day, the most prominent carousel slot on the PS Store homepage was updated on time with the promotional image for Minecraft.

That image was requested by Sony, and after several rounds of internal discussion at Spark Games, it was finalized by the lead artist, Su Meng.

A blocky character stood on a mountaintop, facing a pixel-style ocean, with the setting sun dyeing the entire world orange-red.

At the very bottom of the image was a line of small text: "July 20th, Your World Starts Here!"

Jiang Yuan sat in her office, her computer displaying the PS Store backend data dashboard, and on her desk sat a steaming cup of fragrant latte that Su Meng had just brought her personally.

Although the recruitment for a personal assistant and work secretary had already begun.

But these were relatively important positions, so it was obviously not something that could be easily settled in a short time.

Currently, Jiang Yuan had personally interviewed a few people, but she wasn't very satisfied with any of them so far.

Su Meng was standing next to her, holding a cup of coffee. Today, she was rarely dressed in a more youthful outfit: a plaid shirt and a pleated skirt, with her soft long hair tied into a ponytail. She looked as if she had instantly become several years younger, beautiful and bright.

As the time reached 10:00 sharp, the download count on the page in front of her began to tick upward.

The numbers were jumping even faster than Jiang Yuan had expected.

It broke 10,000 at 10:05, 50,000 at 10:20, and by 12:00 noon, the first-day download volume had surged into the top three in the history of the PS Store's indie game category.

The contact person from Sony sent a message in English. Jiang Yuan glanced at it; the gist was, "This performance far exceeds our expectations, congratulations!"

At 2:00 PM, the first batch of player reviews began to appear in the PS Store's comment section.

Jiang Yuan scrolled through a few; most were positive, but a few mentioned some issues that hadn't been noticed before.

One player said that the controller sensitivity in build mode wasn't responsive enough, especially when placing small blocks, as the joystick's fine-tuning precision was lacking. Another player said the in-game text appeared too small on living room TVs, making it difficult to read from the sofa.

Jiang Yuan took screenshots of these two pieces of feedback and sent them to Zhou Ming, saying:

"Have the team responsible for Minecraft release a patch. Add an adjustable option for joystick sensitivity and make the UI text size adaptive to the TV screen size. It would be best to get it done within a week."

Zhou Ming quickly replied:

"Understood, President Jiang, received!"

In the evening, after Jiang Yuan finished handling the last email, she leaned back in her chair and let out a long sigh.

Outside the window, the city was already lit up with thousands of lights. In the distance, the glass curtain wall of an office building was scrolling an advertisement, its brilliant light reflecting onto the building opposite, flickering on and off, which was actually quite nice to look at.

She picked up the cup on the table, which had turned into plain water, drank it all in one go, then shut down her computer, grabbed her bag, and walked out of the office.

In the hallway, although most people had already finished work, the lights in the Development Department were still on.

Jiang Yuan went over to take a look out of curiosity, only to find that Zhou Ming and Lin Zhengtao hadn't left yet.

To her surprise, the two guys were sitting side-by-side in front of a screen, discussing something while looking at a piece of code.

Jiang Yuan lightened her footsteps as she passed by, not wanting to disturb them.

Although the company didn't require overtime during normal times, except for the period when a project was being launched, this didn't stop some employees from choosing to work overtime for their own reasons.

Jiang Yuan didn't mind this behavior; it was entirely voluntary.

And as a boss who considered herself decent enough, she would have the finance department compensate these employees who worked overtime with the appropriate pay during the salary settlement.

Time passed by day after day.

The tail end of July slipped away silently in the busyness.

By early August, the total sales of Minecraft across all platforms, finally propelled by the impact of the ps version, officially surpassed 20 million copies.

When this groundbreaking achievement was officially reached.

Even though all members of Spark Games had long been mentally prepared, the moment they saw this scene, a strong sense of joy and excitement still hit everyone's heart like a torrential flood.

Once upon a time.

When Plants vs. Zombies achieved this historic sales figure.

Everyone at Spark Games, including Jiang Yuan, thought that in the future, when facing the same situation, they might not be this excited again.

But now it seemed.

Everyone's previous confidence had been formed a bit too early. In reality, when this scene truly played out again, the intense emotions in their hearts seemed no weaker than when they faced it the first time.

And after this news was made public by the official accounts of Spark Games on various platforms.

The domestic and international gaming circles, which had already fallen into a calm due to the lack of any heavyweight game releases, seemed to be instantly hit by a heavyweight bomb, falling into intense shock.

And the most typical reaction to this news was clearly a hot post in a Tieba related to Steam, which had tens of thousands of likes and over a thousand comments:

"How do you evaluate the fact that Minecraft, launched by Spark Games, broke 20 million in sales in just one month? Where are those people who said that if Spark Games dared to create its own platform, Minecraft would definitely be doomed regardless of its quality?"

"Who knows? I was playing Slay the Spire at the time, I definitely didn't say that!"

"To the guy above, you were the one clamoring the loudest back then, I even took screenshots, okay!"

"Hahaha, it's funny thinking about the faces of those Steam fanboys who endlessly bad-mouthed the Spark Platform back then. Too bad I forgot to save the posts, otherwise, I would definitely dig up the graves to unearth these bastards today and see what their faces look like now!"

"To be fair, I saved those posts, but I'm afraid if I dig them up, the moderator will gag me directly."

"Honestly, my eyes were opened a while ago. I've seen gaming fanboys and company fanboys, but this is really the first time I've seen platform fanboys!"

"I can only say that Steam is indeed a very good platform, but unfortunately, a bunch of idiots rely on this platform to feel superior. It's just ridiculous!"

"I can finally speak. This sub-forum was stinking to high heaven a while ago, and I didn't dare to make a sound for fear of being labeled a Spark fanboy, hahaha."

"Although this sub-forum was indeed stinky a while ago, the question is, which Tieba sub-forum isn't stinky now? Isn't the whole platform a toilet?"

"There's still a difference. At the very least, this sub-forum definitely doesn't stink as much as those maggots over at the Anti-Pressure sub-forum!"

"Really? I think it's six of one, half a dozen of the other!"

"The topic has drifted. Speaking of which, surely Spark Games won't release a hit with every single game, with every one breaking 10 million in sales, right? That would be too damn ridiculous."

"That shouldn't be the case, right? But it's true that it's ridiculous for Minecraft to break 20 million in sales. I'm not hating, but I honestly thought back then that Spark Games developing its own platform was absolutely doomed..."