Mojang Announces Las Vegas Minecraft Convention For November

Mojang, the company behind indie gaming mega-hit MineCraft, has announced plans to hold a convention dubbed "MineCon" November 18 to 19 in Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay hotel and casino. The event will coincide with the planned full-version launch of the game, which has already attracted nearly 3 million paid purchases and well over $33 million in revenue since the alpha version launched last year. "For me, MineCon is about celebrating the full release of Minecraft," Mojang founder Markus "Notch" Persson told PC Gamer via e-mail. "I'm really looking forward to getting up on stage and pushing the button to upload the final build." Mojang founder Markus "Notch" Persson first publicly floated the idea of such a conference back in May, asking visitors to his blog if they would pay "about $90 per person," plus travel and accommodations, to attend a conference including in-game and real world contests, Q&A sessions and parties. Nearly 43,000 respondents said they would "definitely" attend such a conference, with another 65,000 putting themselves down as "maybe"s. For context, roughly 28,000 people paid $150 each to attend last year's largest-ever Blizzcon event. Registration for the conference will open next week, according to Persson, with full details to be announced via his Twitter account.