Minecraft is closing in on sales of 6 million copies of the game, according to a recent tweet by Jeb.  "In other news, we're only 16k from reaching 6 million," he said a couple of hours ago, and then linked to the stats page on Minecraft.net.  There we see that the current number of owners of the game has reached 5,985,924. That's a lot of builders.

To put that in perspective,that's more than the population of Nicaragua, and closing in on the population of Sierra Leone.  That makes Minecraft, if it were a country, the 110th largest nation in the world according to populace.  And the numbers keep growing.  In the last 24 hours 8,751 bought the game.  No doubt this was helped by the recent release of Minecraft Xbox 360.  All I can say is Mojang is making the most of their cash cow, but they aren't halting development any time soon -- and that's good for the players as well as the developer.

Minecraft will receive a new update tomorrow that will include, according to Jeb, the return of the Golden Apple -- with a new use -- a new block type suggested by reddit, and a tweak to the stars in Minecraft that makes them a little more realistic.  Perhaps these additions will entice the last 16 thousand people to pick up the game.  Until then, if you'll excuse me, I have some Iron Golems to build.