Chalk up another award for the dream team that is Mojang! In only 24 hours since its release on Xbox Live Arcade, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has already broken digital sales records. It would appear that lightning has struck twice for the superstar indie developer and their flagship IP – but some players have been left feeling the burn.
After the swift success of Minecraft on the PC, it was logically assumed that ports of the charmingly simplistic sandbox game would appear on consoles. Fast-forward a few months, as well as a whole lot of hype, and here we are: Minecraft has finally arrived on the Xbox 360, and our own Riley Little has already given it a pretty thorough review.
While Minecraft has been breaking records and setting examples for XBLA, it turns out a few key issues still remain. First and foremost, a main feature and huge draw of the Xbox 360 version is the ability to craft your mines with up to four players – provided you’re using an HDTV. Casual gamers still using SDTVs will be locked out of this feature, and there is no prior warning whatsoever from the port’s developer – 4J Studios.
One would think that with the retro, pixellated style of the game that there would be enough real estate on the screen to go around — Nintendo has been doing this for years with nary a complaint. In fact, I can’t actually can’t play the game myself – since I use an earlier large format plasma screen that is not an HDTV. Being that this is a major selling point of the game, there is no doubt the developers should have given potential buyers fair warning.
Microsoft issued a statement shortly after buyer outrage started to fill up XBLA forums:
“In order to deliver the best consumer experience, and to support the text needs of the inventory and crafting system, split-screen multiplayer in Minecraft does require an HD screen. Currently, in-game prompts alert players of the HD requirements for split-screen multiplayer.”
What do you think, Ranters: is it fair for Microsoft to simply cut-out non-HD TV owners – without fair warning – just to keep user interfaces fully-readable?
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is available now on Xbox Live Arcade for 1600 Microsoft Points ($20).
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who doesn’t own an hd tv these days?
My thoughts exactly. I don’t see why this is such a big deal.
In first world countries like the US or UK, it may be common place to just “charge, charge, charge the ol’ card”, but you might be surprised to find out that not everybody can actually afford an HDTV.
I have one (don’t have an X-Box though), but most of my friends still don’t have one, and those that do have an HDTV or monitor, have only recently made the (expensive) switch…
IMO, this isn’t really a big deal (it is just a game after all), but any company should be obligated to give fair warning PRIOR to releasing a product (what they did can be seen as false advertising).
I still don’t. I know they are very cheap nowadays but It’s still hard to pony up the dough to buy one. If I had the extra cash I would.
But I don’t have an Xbox360 for this anyway. Carry on.
I dont. My family has 2 TVs, one a HDTV, which I cant use for gameing, and mine in the basement, which I picked up a a yard sale for 5 bucks. Kinda pissed I cant do splitscreen, but honestly, as long as I can do single player or multiplayer online, I dont care TO much.
Believe it or not, my family never needed an HDTV. We just got one last sunday lol. Pretty nice one at that too! The SDTV are very reliable and last a while, had it since ’96
exactly, and if they dont have one u can buy one at the cost of the 360 taht u own and it would be a decent size… HDTV’s are nolonger extremely expenseive like they use to be. so i dont see the problem. even i have one and we dont make more than 12,000 a year…. and i have an xbox and everything… so people shouldnt complain about the HDTVs being expensive cause there not…
Do you not understand that for someone hoping to do 4 player split screen on their regular TV, they have to buy a new TV just to play a feature promised to everyone? So instead of paying $20 for the game (already $5 more than other XBLA games) they have to put hundreds of more dollars down for a TV just to utilize this feature
I’m sorry that not everybody can just walk into walmart and buy an hdtv at any given time like the majority of this comment section apparently can
Not everyone owns an HDTV, it wasn’t until I got with my fiance that I had an HDTV. It wouldn’t be a big deal, if it wasn’t disclosed. I had to go get an HDMI cable myself. It is a bit of a hassle so I can understand those that are upset.
Meant to say wouldn’t be a big deal if it was disclosed.
Playing Minecraft on PC is prolly the best way to go until the developers make it so you can have more than 4 players at a time. Plus it looks better haha (on PC)
That’s BS in my opinion. i mean yea a lot of people have HDTV’s but not everyone. The 4 player split screen was the selling point in my opinion and not telling people is just messed up.
I don’t even see how people without an HDTV have been playing current gen games at all. Before I managed to get my HDTV, I couldn’t read any text on the screen in most of the games I played. Maybe I missed the memo somewhere along the lines, but why does the text have to be completely incompatible with SDTV anyway?
My bestfriend used to play his Xbox 360 and PS3 on a SDTV before he got his HDTV last year, and it was completely playable. I go over to his house alot to play split screen, even the Minecraft clones on the Indie game store. So for the official minecraft port to not have this? It is a shame.
I remember when I used to play games from like ps1 when you could barely see any of the text unless you had a huge tv. and those were single player games I had a hard time with. So if hud becomes hard to read in splitscreen minecraft, its not like its the first time you had to guess what you were doing or had to do.
I’m making the NC1701-D Enterprise right now.
i got two things to say. the graphics and the story is horrible oh and the gameplay is non existant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! god damn pcfangays.
“Donald Cartwright” is officially an idiot. He’s been posting crap all over….
Considering my 10 year old SON just blew $80 bucks that has taken him MONTHS to earn on the Minecraft for xbox and a second controller so he could play it multi-player with his brothers and friends, only to discover that it cannot be played on our TV, after the fact, after all the hype and hopes and waiting… I would say that not being straight forward about the limitations of this game is an EXTREMELY cheap ploy on the part of the developer and I hope they enjoy the fact they are making kids across the US sad.