Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition

It would seem that falsely predicting the arrival of The End is something reserved not strictly for ancient Mayan civilizations, but also for modern video game developers. Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition developer 4J Studios responded to fan questions on Twitter yesterday about the impending arrival of the floating island known as “The End” is actually not impending at all: the island will not be patched into the XBLA version of the game along with Title Update 8 (TU8), as the developer said it would back in December.

The reason for the delay is that the studio has been forced to dedicate time to creating fixes for bugs that popped up in Title Update 7 (TU7), which released on December 19. 4J tweeted that its assertion that The End would come to XBLA as part of the next title update was made “before we knew we were releasing a bug fix update for TU7. The bug fix update will be TU8, so The End will be later.”

Some of the bugs that will be addressed include one the “Kick Player” bug that freezes the player’s Xbox when the host tries to kick him or her and one that mistakenly prompts players that they cannot sleep in beds when monsters are around.

The developer was unwilling to slap a date on TU8 yet because it’s still working on getting some of the bugs from TU7 ironed out before it’s ready to submit it to Microsoft for certification.

Whenever The End does ultimately release it will give players a new area to explore and a stiff challenge in the form of the Ender Dragon boss. Players who have created a portal to The End in a world generated after TU7 went live will be able to use it to gain access to the area once it is patched into the XBLA version of Minecraft.

Also still on their way to Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition at an undetermined date are the texture packs that were first announced in November.

Sources: @4JStudios 1, 2, 3 and 4 via Polygon