At the time of this writing, 19,802,2345 people have registered online for a Minecraft account (not sure how accurate that first number is as it appears to be a simple timed counter) and 4,617,339 have purchased the game. Needless to say, it proved itself a long time ago to be a monstrous success and it reigned supreme as one of the most buzzed about games of 2011.
Since it’s release in November however, the tides have calmed on the Minecraft front, partly due to the lack of updates now that it’s released in full, and party due to all of the other games that came out in the fall. That may change tomorrow with the possibility of the first major post-launch update.
The information comes directly from Jens “Jeb” Bergensten, the lead developer on Minecraft. Really, he’s been the only full-time developer working on Minecraft and has been for a long time, with Minecraft creator Notch assisting before the game launched in full but moving on to other projects. Jens is now joined by new Mojang member Jon Kagstrom with the rest of the staff at Mojang is focused on their second game in development, Scrolls, a game that’s earned its fair share of publicity thanks to the highly publicized legal battle with Bethesda. Mojang will not hire a team of developers for the game due to Notch’s philosophy on teams and maintaining a game’s “personality.” You can read more about that on Notch’s personal blog.
The major thing Jens is working on is the long-in-development Modding API for Minecraft which would add official mod support to the game, something much desired (read: needed) by the non tech savvy playing the vanilla version of the game. For an idea of other tweaks and updates the game has endured, the below features were listed in the latest Minecraft snapshot last week:
- New language translations. We changed from using Google Docs to a new system, so these may still contain a lot of errors or missing texts. Please check the Minecraft forums (language section) for more info.
- Slightly smoothed color transitions between biomes
- Reduced brewing time to 20 seconds
- Decreased randomness of Enchantment Tables
- Changed colors of spawning eggs to more represent the mobs they spawn
- Made biomes slightly more varied (hills in forests and deserts, beaches)
- Added world type options (currently only super-flat and default)
- Removed collision box from ladders
- Updated fence gate collision box to align with fences
With the Kinect-enabled Xbox 360 version of Minecraft coming this year with an entirely new interface, we wonder how it’ll compare to the PC version by the time it debuts. It’s being developed by 4J Studios, the team behind the XBLA remakes of Perfect Dark and Banjo-Kazooie.
In other news, Cobalt, the first third party indie game to be published by Mojang had its v101a update release last week as well.
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Kinect…wow, that’s some bull…but not for Notch haha.
Can’t wait for the Xbox release.
No lag…no adjusting settings…no setting my computer to ‘adjust for best performance’ so it can handle Minecraft. :’)
Chris, your logic is ridiculous. The Xbox version of Minecraft looks absolutely terrible. Poor textures, low frame rates, no mods, poor distance rendering. The Xbox version flat out sucks compared to the PC version. Not to mention crappy servers.
It must not occur to you that some people’s computers can’t perform up to par with an XBox, making that version better for them.
It looks exactly the same! Poor textures? Uh, how the hell is Minecraft supposed to have amazing textures?
“Not to mention crappy servers”? The game isn’t even released yet and you’re complaining about servers!?
You’ve only seen a alpha build at Minecon that doesn’t even represent the final product!
someones a fanboy COUGH COUGH oogie COUGH COUGH
?
Glad they haven’t fixed that invalid server key error yet. Minecraft is a great game with great developers but the game still needs work and bug fixes. Also, I doubt the update will come out tomorrow, Mojang isn’t well known for its punctuality.
Ha, seems Nova’s cries for Mojang to “fix the ladders” finally reached them.
After all this time, I would have expect more to be added to the game like new mobs or crafting. While I like Minecraft, I am a little disappointed in the lack of a “team” dedicated to this game.
1. I don’t give a crap about servers.
2. Crappy textures? Minecraft is made from crappy textures…that’s the whole premise of the game. Block world. Can’t get much crappier.
3. Frame rate? To be honest, I haven’t encountered a frame rate problem in any game…ever. I’ve been playing games since the SNES first came out…so…yeah.
4. Mods? Don’t care. Half the time, they don’t work properly anyway. The only one I like is the Castlevania texture pack, not to mention the Chrono Trigger one as well.
5. Distance rendering? Hmmmm….most people on Minecraft forums agree that the game WILL have, emphasis on the “will” part, have adjustable settings. Now the thing about that is…it’s a retail console. Not a build-a-bear computer that needs tons o’ dollars to work right. So, logically as you might put it, the Xbox version will be stable enough.
Thank you gentlemen for your time. If needed, I can provide specs for everything to confirm.
almost all the mods ive ever used in minecraft have worked the first time. and as for the tons of dollars build a bear computer, you could build a computer for 300 bucks thats better than the xbox and could run minecraft flawlessly. i wish people would stop perpetuating the myth that you need a $1000 pc to play games, it just gets on my nerves.
Xbox = $169 for best console, no upgrades needed until next console.
Computer = $300, upgrades expected $$$
I’m not seeing the benefit here.
But who cares anyway? Stupid argument. I wouldn’t mind having a sweet computer with lots of RAM and memory and whatnot. I just would prefer an Xbox version of Minecraft at this moment since my laptop can barely be considered a gaming computer…despite it’s so called “rating” on the Microsoft Experience Index.