One thing can be said about Exato Games, and that is that they seem to be having fun as they blend elements from Minecraft and Call of Duty into one game. While their previous trailer for Guncraft aimed squarely at the shooteriest of first person shooters, this one announcing the start of the closed beta of May 21st decides to blow the head off of Minecraft, in quite a literal sense.
If you’ve played Ace of Spades before, or the two aforementioned games and then imagine them together, you already know what Guncraft is. If you’re not sure what we’re getting at then imagine a first person shooter which utilizes building structures block by block, in fact, imagine the whole game made up of 1
When you’re growing up, you’re often told that whining won’t get you anywhere. Don’t pester people; it’ll only make them less likely to listen, and you’ll probably end up coming across as a petulant little troglodyte.
Of course, as soon as you reach adulthood, you realise that these pearls of wisdom hold little weight in the wretched realities of modern life. That’s why, after weeks and weeks of seemingly incessant pleas from the IGM community, we’ve abandoned our solemn principles and decided to write about Tiggit. Happy now?
If you’d like to be coy about it, you could quite adequately describe Tiggit as a basic replica of the Steam client that caters solely for the freeware indie games scene. In essence, it’s a desktop-based application that allows users to download freeware titles at the click of a mouse, sorting them neatly into a single, readily identifiable directory on your hard drive.
Microsoft has announced that Minecraft has sold one million copies in just five days on the Xbox 360, which breaks just about every record known to man or something.
We knew it was going to be big. Minecraft has sold upwards of six million copies since debuting on the PC and understandably there were a lot of non-PC players eager to check out what this phenomenon was all about. Despite being an older and limited version of the game, the Xbox 360 Edition of Minecraft has been a big seller, in fact, THE biggest selling XBLA title in a 24 hour period.
One million copies in just five days. Well damn. You really wanted to play Minecraft, didn’t you? The announcement comes from Major Nelson’s blog where some other “fun facts” were also released regarding playtime on Minecraft. As follows:
Total Online Hours: 5.2M
Multiplayer sessions: 4M
Total Multiplayer gaming hours: 2.4M
Like we said, that’s the older version of the game – we also found out today that there will be many updates in the future for the Xbox 360 version of the sandbox crafter, so that it gets closer to the most up to date version on the PC.
With the release of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition last week, those familiar with the PC version of the sandbox crafter would have realised that it the console has been treated to a much older version than the most up to date one. Fear not, as 4J Studios have announced that the XBLA version of the game will be getting continued updates:
“We’re aiming to update to the major PC releases – first one will be the equivalent of the PC Beta 1.7.3 version”, they said via Twitter.
As they mentioned the specific version which the game will be updated first, we can actually tell you what you can expect to see change in the Xbox 360 Edition. As follows:
Added pistons
Fixed clay generation
Flint and Steel or redstone is now required to trigger TNT
Fences can be stacked
Added Shears
Redstone wire now will connect to a repeater
Shears can be used to pick up leaf blocks
Shears can be used to shear sheep without hurting them
Sheep no longer drop wool from being punched, only from being killed when they are unsheared
New textures for Cobblestone and Brick blocks
Silverfish skin was added (for Beta 1.8)
So there you have it. There’s no release date on this first update but we imagine that it shall be sooner rather than later. Even better, you should be seeing regular updates in the future so that you’re not playing a version of Minecraft from yesteryear on your console.
More information on Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition can be found on the game’s official Xbox Live marketplace listing.
Adam Sawkins, lead developer of FortressCraft, has called the police after a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack was carried out on FortressCraft.com on May 9th – the launch day of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition.
Since FortressCraft launched on the Xbox Live Indie Game marketplace, Adam has been exposed to a number of negative remarks due to the game’s similarities to Minecraft causing it to be labelled a clone on many occasions. This is a label that Adam has rejected and fought against ever since. Despite the flak, FortressCraft has risen to the very top of the sales chart for XBLIG and has recently been surpassed in total sales by another Minecraft similar, Total Miner.
Yesterday, the negativity against FortressCraft grew to a new height when the game’s official website was overloaded and is still offline due to the DDoS attack. Not long after, Adam took to Twitter where he made it clear that he believed the attack was planned by parts of the Minecraft community – this tweet being the most revealing:
“Aaaand, the FortressCraft website’s being DDOSd. Fuck you and your ‘community’, @Notch”
Since then, Adam revealed to Eurogamer that he has actually gone so far as to call the police about the attack claiming that, under British law, the police can play role in this as hacking in any form is treated very seriously and as it is a business site that is the victim, there is a potential loss of earnings.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Adam is also not a fan of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, claiming that “4J [Studios] had no budget restrictions, unfettered access to Microsoft, and a solid, world-class game as a template, and still managed to ship a game with a tiny world, no working skins, and no dedicated servers – and even that was a port of a 14 month old snapshot of the MC source base.”
Despite those setbacks, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition seems to have gone on to become one of the top selling XBLA titles of all time, the leaderboards boasting at least 600,000 players in the first 24 hours of the game’s launch. Markus “Notch” Persson also tweeted that the game was profitable in just one hour.
One of the unique features of Minecraft on the Xbox 360, which was released yesterday, is that players could participate in four player splitscreen. We noticed that we were getting quite a few comments on our site about this feature and outrage also kicked off in the Minecraft forums; many people asking how to make the splitscreen work. It turns out that in order to access that feature you need to have a HD screen, though no one was told this prior to buying the game.
The developers who handled the port, 4J Studios, were asked via Twitter whether a HDMI input was required to make the splitscreen work, to which they replied with this tweet:
“Splitscreen mode needs a High Def screen, so either HDMI or Component cable.”
The problem with this requirement is that it was never stated anywhere (and we mean anywhere) that this was the case. The press weren’t told, it was never included in statements about the game, the trailer or even on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Kotaku contacted Microsoft about the dilemma and they then released this statement:
“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.”
So there you have it – you need a HD screen in order to access Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition‘s splitscreen. It would be nice if they had told people beforehand though, eh?
You can purchase Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition over on the Xbox Live Marketplace and you can find out more information about the game on its official website.
The fine folks over at Raptr have recently launched a rewards program by which players can win many different prizes – early beta access, discounts on hardware and free games. With the launch of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition they’re now offering Raptr users a chance to win a free copy of the game.
From May 10th (tomorrow), those who meet the pre-requisites and are amongst the first 2500 to do so will get themselves a dandy copy of the game. So, what are said pre-requisites?
Well, first off you’re obviously going to need to sign up with Raptr if you haven’t done so already – you can do that on the official website. Then you’ll need to keep an eye out on the Raptr Rewards page when they announce what challenge players will have to complete in order to earn a free copy of the game. Typically this involves being of a certain Raptr Rank on a range of games, which can be made higher via increased playtime and earning achievements.
Everyone who lies within the the countries included in this Xbox LIVE regions list are eligible to win a free copy of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. The game normally costs 1600 Microsoft points so that is quite the saving – definitely worth fighting for.
If you didn’t catch it already, Minecraft was released on the Xbox 360 just today and is available to purchase via this page. The port comes with an added tutorial, splitscreen multiplayer and various interface tweaks designed for a gamepad.
More information on the Raptr Reward scheme which features plenty of other great giveaways can be found right here.
The day that so many Xbox 360 players have been waiting for has arrived. Yes, Minecraft is now available on Microsoft’s console from now on and forever (well, probably).
The world’s most famous sandbox crafter has been a hit with the PC and mobile versions so it’s hard to see how it won’t be on the console. Available for 1600 MSP, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is essentially no different to the PC version except it misses out on the many texture packs and modding support. There is four player splitscreen though and up to eight players can play together in the same world online.
You can queue up your download of Minecraft for your Xbox 360 from this page.
More information on Minecraft can be found over on the game’s official website.
With 6 million Minecraft players, you may think that Mojang wouldn’t need to think about the future of the game, especially in terms of continuing to make money off of it in the future. However, that is exactly what Mojang CEO, Carl Manneh, is considering at the moment and it seems that he is favoring the idea of giving players a subscription model which will have the benefit of making the sandbox crafter more user-friendly.
“I don’t think the Minecraft wave is over by a long shot, but the market will be saturated eventually. Since Minceraft is a game you pay for once, and then always have access to no matter how many updates and changes we release, we have to look at new ways to make money in the long run.”
“This is both a way to make life easier for the players and for us to guarantee that the hosting solution is of a good quality, and in the long run generate some money through a subscription model. This service won’t be free, and it’s not unthinkable that it will be an important source of revenue going forward.”
So there you have it – pretty confident words there. At this moment in time, players who want to enjoy the company of friends in the game can set-up their own servers in a DIY kind of solution. This may not be for everyone though and it is this that Mojang are looking to alleviate with this subscription model, at the same time making sure that the service is more stable.
More information on Minecraft can be found on the game’s official website.
Hi I’m from the press so I enjoy making up rivalries where they don’t exist! You’re welcome. This time we have two horses going at each other, biting at hooves and whipping with tails – FortressCraft and Total Miner. FortressCraft made the first move when the developer announced that the sandbox crafter reached 750,000 sales with this tweet.
Not to be outdone, the developer of Total Miner – also known as the game which recently became the top seller on XBLIG – came out with this tweet announcing that the game had hit 800,000 sales. In your face FortressCraft! Or something.
Of course, both of these games are heavily inspired by Mojang’s Minecraft and any attempt to deny that fact is futile, but they have their own unique features and are quality games – clearly, the figures show that. However, it will be interesting to see how well they can hold a community when the grand stallion of the sandbox crafter, Minecraft obviously, lands on XBLA on May 9th. Their much cheaper price points will not doubt give them a fighting chance of course and it’s not like they haven’t already sold loads already – still, will the communities switch over? We’ll see, oh, we’ll see.
So, who’s starting the bettings on who will sell a million copies first? Minecraft, FortressCraft or Total Miner? We know who our money is on.
You can find out more information about Total Miner on its official website, and about FortressCraft on its official website.
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