Microsoft would have to sell 92,592,592 copies of minecraft to break even. So far, 16,730,534 have been sold.

That's just PC sales. In April this year XBox 360 sales reached 12M and PS3 sales were 1.5M.

That aside, the real money is in merchandising and tie-ups

Minecraft also makes more on merchandising sales than software sales.

Half the under-13s in the country have or will have a Minecraft t-shirt, lunchbox and/or action figure. The game revenue is a small part of it. If you have kids you probably know the mindshare this game has. It's bigger than any video game I remember.

It'd be interesting to see Microsoft make Minecraft a free addition to every licensed copy of Windows.