According to the official Minecraft stats page, more than 500,000 of the nearly 1.6 million registered players have already purchased a license for the game, which is still in the alpha phase of development. That’s pretty much unprecedented in the history of game development — certainly indie game development — and perhaps only comparable to a big-budget marketing effort; one that might secure those kinda pre-release purchase numbers through pre-orders and offer a limited “beta” trial of the game through a highly-controlled channel. So, yeah, Minecraft’s “alpha stage” success is unprecedented.
Is it just luck? The one-man mastermind behind it all, Markus Perrson, doesn’t think so.