Minecraft for Xbox Game Rant Review

While the darling indie success Minecraft enjoys its continued growth now that it's made its way to consoles, there's still a lot more that needs to be done. In less than a week, the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft sold over a million copies at $20 a pop. Adding to its incredible PC numbers and record-breaking app sales, and the franchise is still bringing in the big bucks for creator Markus "Notch" Persson.

Handling the Xbox-exclusive version of the block game was developer 4J Studios (instead of Mojang), but for anyone familiar with Minecraft on PC, what Xbox players got was only a fraction of the real game. That means there are a lot of updates coming, the first of which is the 1.7.3 update (pistons!).

For players who didn't take advantage of the countless creative user-made mods on the PC version of the game, Minecraft lacked a sense of purpose and the experience could get rather stale after playing it for a while. Mining and crafting in the game can only be fun for so long in the vanilla Minecraft so after a series of updates, the game released in full last November with the 'Adventure Update.' This added more creatures, but more importantly, it added a sense of purpose.

Players could explore and find villages, large hidden keeps, underground abandoned mine shafts with chests full of rare treasures and there was even another world added as a form of end-game content. In the Xbox 360 version, despite its $20 price tag, all of that is missing, but will eventually come through updates. Minecraft is an ever-evolving game and that characteristic applies to the game's console variant as well. That doesn't mean it's going to be the same as the PC version though.

The first update coming will be the 1.7.3 which focuses on pistons and the 1.8 adventure update could be next, but it could be a while since it's far more complicated to implement. 4J Studios' Paddy Burns tells OXM:

"This is going to be the most difficult update due to the sheer amount of changes, and also the underlying architecture changes that come with it. We're looking forward to the challenge!"

"We are working with Daniel Kaplan at Mojang to define what is going in to the Xbox version, but the aim is to include as many of the PC features that make sense on the Xbox as possible. The game isn't Minecraft on the Xbox, it is Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, so it isn't really a direct port of the PC game."

For those who haven't experienced Minecraft, read our review of the Xbox 360 version - It is a great way to go for console players with friends willing to jump into the game as well. If you're a PC player of the game, it's not worth buying.

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Follow Rob on Twitter @rob_keyes.

Source: OXM