Mojang is looking to expand their Minecraft offerings with Minecraft Realms. Designed to open the game up to larger markets, this new online service is expected to have a subscription fee between $10 and $15 a month.
“Our costumers [for Realms] are parents who are tired of trying to act as server administrators on behalf of their kids,” said Mojang CEO Carl Manneh. “Minecraft Realms will be a simpler kind of service, aimed at families and kids. In the future we aim to offer certain profiles with mods that are certified to work without crashing, but this will still be a safe and easy way for kids and families to play Minecraft online.”
“In the end I think this will get Minecraft new players, since there is a viral aspect of Realms. Kids will probably invite friends who don’t have Minecraft yet to play with them,” added Manneh. “All we know is that there has been a great demand for this service. We have never tried to sell anything to our gamers except the game itself and a little merchandise, so it’ll be very interesting to see if the community will be prepared to pay for a service like this. But since we have about 10 million paying PC gamers and, soon, as many mobile gamers, there’s definitely potential. And yes, if we look ahead, I do think [Realms will] be the biggest source of income in the future, and to bring in more money in total than the game itself.”
Source: GamesIndustry International
