Since its launch in the summer of last year, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has been the poster child for downloadable success. Breaking sales records left and right, Mojang's simple concept has expanded to become a worldwide phenomenon with dozens of ways to play and millions of creative possibilities.
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition passed the 6 million "unit" mark back in March, and it doesn't appear to be showing any signs of letting up. Additionally, Minecraft recreations have become a fairly common occurrence online — the most recent being BioShock Infinite's Columbia. Needless to say, there are tons of creative people out there with at least one, probably several, copies of Minecraft floating around out there.
Even so, there are still some gamers (surprisingly) who are unable to get in on the Minecraft action. An online distribution model — through Xbox Live, the PC, and mobile platforms — has prevented gamers without access to Internet from playing Minecraft. That will all change very soon, though, but a little later than expected.
As just announced by Major Nelson today, the disc-based version of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has been delayed until June 4th. Since the main goal of this retail-focused edition is to give players without Internet access to Minecraft, Microsoft wants to ensure the product ships with the latest updates.
While the game's main file is only 113MB, that is before the myriad updates that have hit since then. Although the Xbox 360 version is on a bit of a delay as far as Minecraft updates are concerned, Microsoft is still diligently working to bring their version up to speed. However, once this version ships, that's it — no more additional content without an online update.
Therefore, the timing of the announcement suggests an update is in the pipeline for Minecraft on XBLA — one that should hit shortly. Originally, the boxed edition was supposed to release on April 30th, so judge when an update might release accordingly.
Are there any gamers out there still interested in Minecraft that have yet to give it a chance? What do you consider the best way to play?
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition hits store shelves on June 4, 2013.
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Source: Major Nelson