Minecraft Message Board older than one year ago

Season’s greetings! Owen from Mojang here. I have some exciting news that you might be interested in. It’s about Minecraft – a game that’s sold over 30 million copies to date. Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks. At first, you’ll probably build simple structures to protect against nocturnal monsters. Later on, you might work with your friends to create wonderful, imaginative things.

It can also be about adventuring or watching the sun rise over a blocky ocean. It’s pretty. Brave players battle terrible things in The Nether, which is more scary that pretty. You can also visit a land of mushrooms if it sounds more like your cup of tea.

Minecraft: PlayStation 3 Edition will be available to download from PSN on December 17th in North America. Minecraft: PlayStation 4 Edition and Minecraft: PS Vita Edition are also being developed, but we don’t have release dates yet. Expect them sometime next year.

I’ve received a few questions concerning the PS3 edition over the past few months, so let’s clear them up before I get thrown off the blog…

Q: Does Minecraft: PS3 Edition feature everything from the other versions of Minecraft?
Minecraft: PS3 Edition comes with everything present in other console versions. They’re pretty much identical to play, and will be developed in tandem from now on.

Q: Will Minecraft: PS3 Edition feature DLC texture packs and skins?
Downloadable skins and texture packs will be available from PSN soon after release.

Q: Will there be PlayStation-specific content?
PlayStation-specific skins and texture packs would be cool! Fingers crossed, eh?

Q: Will Minecraft: PS3 Edition feature Remote Play or compatibility with the PS4 or PS Vita editions?
We don’t know yet, sorry. We’ll let you know as soon as we do.

Q: Does Herobrine feature in Minecraft: PS3 Edition?
Probably not.

That’s it for now! I’ll do my best to answer any more queries you have below! Merry Christmas/Nadolig Llawen everyone!

Owen – @bopogamel

No stranger to huge sales numbers, the people behind the Xbox 360 iteration of Minecraft have reacted to word that the game has sold more than ten million units in the best way possible: massive discounts for the game's dedicated fans.

Come Saturday, December 14, nearly every skin and texture pack DLC addition for Minecraft Xbox 360 will be reduced in price by 50 percent. We say "nearly" because while all of the standard packs will be discounted, those special mash-up packs merging Minecraft with content from another game - Skyrim, for instance - will not see a drop in price.

No reason is offered for this exclusion, though it's less likely a shadowy games industry conspiracy than simple common licensing issues preventing these packs from appearing in the discounted slate.

For most, Minecraft is just a game about building a castle out of colorful blocks then losing it all to a Creeper invasion. But for one man, Minecraft was something else: an inspiration.Read more...

Minecraft is one of the biggest games on the planet. Valve is perhaps the most beloved video game developer around. Imagine, for a moment, if the two had somehow joined forces. Finished? OK, now remember: it could actually have happened.Read more...

It's been available for a bit to those willing to muck about with slightly-esoteric settings menus, but barring catastrophe, tomorrow should bring simple, one-click Twitch streaming functionality to the Minecraft masses.

As we reported when the feature made its testing debut, streaming in Minecraft is obscenely simple. Simply toggle the streaming option in the game, then whenever you're doing something neat that you just have to share with the world, tap the F6 key and suddenly you've got an online audience for your blocky shenanigans.

There is still no word on whether streaming functionality will come to the Linux version of Minecraft. "Currently, Twitch for Minecraft only supports Windows (Vista and later) and Mac OS X (10.8, 10.9)," the company previously told us. "Linux support is currently not planned due to licensing issues surrounding the encoding software."

Indeed. To destroy a whole room full of invincible Bedrock/Adminium blocks in Minecraft, all you need is a massive fireball and two hours, thirty minutes, and fifty-nine seconds of calculations. And patience, obviously.Read more...

Peel back the story and art and most games are incredibly simple. A test of reflexes, some rudimentary mechanics. We live most of our lives oblivous to this man behind the curtain, but sometimes it pays to peel it back and remember that Sonic really is little but holding right except sometimes.Read more...

Sharing footage of your finest blocky creations just became much easier with the addition of simple, one-click Twitch streaming to the PC and Mac incarnations of Minecraft.

Though this agreement was outlined at the recent MineCon event, it wasn't until today that things changed within Minecraft. Now, after a quick visit to enable streaming in your account settings, you can stream gameplay footage at a moment's notice simply by pressing the F6 key. If any of that sounds too complicated, don't worry: the video above serves as a walkthrough of Minecraft's new streaming features.

The only caveat here is that Twitch support is currently only available to Minecraft players under Windows and OS X. We have contacted Twitch to ask if the game's Linux version might also see streaming options in the future and are currently awaiting a response.

OK, upon second viewing, Rift and Defiance developer Trion’s Trove looks more like Cube World than it does Minecraft. A lot like Cube World. Kind of eerily so. But I suppose it can’t be avoided now that the MMO genre’s been bitten by the voxel bug and– actually, wait, yes it can. EverQuest Next is voxel-based too. Hmmmm. Oh well, enough making block mountains out of block molehills. The truest measure of any game – visual similarities to genre heavy hitters or not – is in how it plays, and while Trion has a framework in place for Trove, that part will largely be up to you.

(more…)

Minecraft: The Story of Mojang—the 2012 documentary about the game, its creator and its impact on video gaming culture—is now free to watch in its entirety thanks to YouTube. You can watch it all here—but you'll need an hour and 45 minutes to do so.Read more...

Minecraft: The Story Of Mojang was a 2011 crowd-funded documentary about Minecraft, featuring interviews with a host of big-name developers: Tim Schafer, Todd Howard, Chris Hecker, Peter Molyneux and some Swedish guy in a hat. Although he doesn’t wear the hat much in this.

General sentiment I heard was that, despite being high production values and a fine roster of talking heads, it was perhaps too fluffy to yield much in the way of true insight. So it’s probably best if one approaches it as celebration rather than investigation of Mojang’s ubiquitous block-building/smashing game. The good news is that there is no longer any need to spend money in order to watch it, for its 1hr44 entirety is now free, free, and thrice free on the YouTubes. I’ve embedded it below for you, for fear you might hurt you fingers if you tried to visit a different webpage.(more…)

I have no idea how the hell this is even possible but a 10-year-old kid in Nebraska is facing felony-with-an-F charges for using his grandmother's credit card to spend $800 on a video game online. Authorities and local media say the game is Minecraft. The hell?Read more...

4J Studios announced that it is currently focused on launching the PlayStation 3 version of Mojang's Minecraft, with ports for next-gen consoles being put on the back burner for the time being.

"We're hard at work getting Minecraft: PS3 Edition ready for testing just now," the studio tweeted. "The other platforms [and Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition's Title Update 14] will be later."

4J is developing Minecraft: Xbox One Edition for Microsoft's upcoming console, along with versions for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita. Release dates for these new ports have not been announced.

You know your video game has made it when you get to appear on late night television and it's not at the behest of a marketing team pushing an upcoming blockbuster.Read more...

Late Notch. On November 7, Markus Persson, the man behind Minecraft, will do something few indie developers have had a chance to do: go on a late night talk show. Notch will be on Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show, which airs on CBS from 12:37AM-1:37AM. Congrats!Read more...

Twitch and Mojang have partnered to deliver an integrated streaming experience in indie sensation Minecraft, the companies announced at MineCon today. Players on PC and Mac with a Twitch account will be able to easily stream their games to their Twitch.tv channels "soon," according to a press release.

Matthew DiPietro, vice president of marketing at Twitch, said in the same press release that Minecraft has "struck a very powerful chord" with Twitch users. "Its constantly escalating popularity illustrates that people love to watch video games outside of the headline-grabbing eSports titles. Expect a watershed moment for both players and spectators once the ability to easily broadcast gameplay directly to Twitch goes live."

While this announcement is for PC and Mac users, it's important to note that the Xbox One will be getting its own version of Minecraft, and Twitch is integrated into Microsoft's next-gen system. So the possibility is there for Twitch streaming from a console version of the game. You know, unless a creeper comes by and blows everything up. Sssssssss.

Twitch.tv announced streaming support for Minecraft on PC and Mac, at Minecon 2013, being held this weekend in Florida. This means Minecraft players will be able to stream to the service directly from the game itself. The feature will be live "soon," says Twitch.Read more...

Minecraft on Xbox 360 is getting into the spirit of the season with a Halloween-themed texture pack, available now through November 3 on the Xbox Marketplace. You can spookify your world by adding ghosts, jack-o-lanterns and more for the low, low price of free.

Even Internet monster Slenderman seems to make an appearance. Hi Slende--AAAAAaaaaaaa!!

“Creepers are stirrin’, child.” “Ah ain’t seeing nothing, Paw.” “Hmm. That’s because you need to earn those eyes. You ain’t never turned around and took a face full of green. But you will. Look yonder, the hill with the hole. See?” “Ah see.” “That used to be a Creeper. And yer maw. She’ll be mighty upset to lose her fineries, but ahm not going out there to get them. Come, ah expect she’s respawned back at the camp. Let’s go, and if you see a chuck, give it a punch. I’m getting hungry. Try and earn them eyes, okay? Something big’s on the way.”

What’s coming is the Minecraft 1.7 update, aka the Update That Changed The World. Oh, and a restraining order from the Wild West Society to stop me from writing more awesome frontier Minecraft fiction. Meanies.(more…)

If you want to find the computer geniuses of tomorrow, you could do worse than to check out which kids are playing Minecraft. That's what Google's thinking, anyway, with a new Minecraft mod that adds quantum behaviors to the game.Read more...

World War II is not something we see every day in the ocean of blocky castles and rollercoasters that usually make up Minecraft's visually compelling constructions. That makes this WWII-themed Minecraft map that much more unique and amazing. It was made by two friends, Rythma and Sycoinc, who compiled this dramatic video to show off the best parts of their incredibly detailed map.Read more...

I don't play Minecraft, my kids don't play Minecraft and I'm not an asshole, so the practice of people trolling children in the game then making a spectacle of it isn't something I was aware of. Now that I am, ungh.Read more...

The short answer is "too much". The long answer is: over 800 pounds for a Grand Theft Auto character, and when it comes to Minecraft, holy shit.Read more...

Last night's South Park took Randy Marsh and the rest of the town's parents to the blocky world of Minecraft, the unavoidable indie sensation that played a key role in the plot.Read more...

This Wednesday's South Park is Minecraft-themed, and if you can't wait to see Trey Parker's twisted take on the blocky indie sensation, you're not alone.Read more...

I admit I didn't see it coming, although after the terrific stuff people did with King's Landing, this one's also an obvious choice: One of the towns from the popular anime Attack on Titan got a stunning Minecraft recreation by etheralcat and his friends, with a memorable moment included.Read more...

A nine-year-old Orlando, Fla. boy—"so tiny ... he could barely see the judge over the podium"—was sentenced to home confinement by a state judge after he brought "multiple weapons to school." The video game being blamed? Minecraft. Mine-bleeping-craft.Read more...

Sure, lovely vistas and detailed visuals are two of Assassin's Creed IV's biggest draws. But if they made the whole game in Minecraft and it looked this good, I'd play that, too.Read more...

86,000 square miles of blockiness, approximately 215 times the map size of Just Cause 2, or 1000 Azeroths from WoW. That's not exactly small, yet Joseph Braybrook, using Ordnance Survey terrain data, was able to make a geographically accurate, 1:1 Minecraft map of Great Britain in just two weeks.Read more...

I think I’m hovering over Nempnett Thrubwell, a village near Bath that I went on a road trip to after discovering there was a place called Nempnett Thrubwell. I know it’s there, because I’m on a Minecraft map that was created by the Ordnance Survey people, and if your job is to make maps then you probably know where all places are. But all I can really see are blocks. Lots and lots of blocks. That is until I start to pull my character into the air. The higher I go, the more sense I can make of the world they’ve made: a Minecraft map of Great Britain, built from their mapping data. It’s yours to download below.(more…)