For those still spending a good chunk of their time with Minecraft, you’ll be happy to know that the Battle and Beasts skin pack is coming to the Xbox Live Marketplace for 160 MSP. In it you’ll find skins for soldiers, sharply dressed blocks, and a bunch of different animals. This adds to the already huge collection of skins that you can find for Minecraft, and you should be able to grab these very soon.
Source: PlayXBLA
After being delayed to include the most recent title updates, European fans of Minecraft will get their retail edition on June 28, about three weeks after the North American release on June 4. Purchasers will also be treated to a 48-hour trial to an Xbox Live Gold account to test out the co-op.
We already know that the downloadable version is ridiculously popular, but maybe this will open the game up to people without Xbox Live in their neighborhood. Or maybe some of you just want a disc copy. Either way, it will be interesting to see the sales of this edition.
Source: VG 24/7
Fans of the world-building game Minecraft have a lot of goodies coming this year—a licensed series of books in the UK and toys from Jazwares. Minecraft continues its expansion beyond the digital world with Seven Stories Press’ English edition of Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus “Notch” Persson and the Game that Changed Everything by Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson. Jennifer Hawkins provides the English language translation. The novel releases November 5, and production of the film adaptation starts this year.
Freelance Swedish journalists Goldberg and Larsson tell the story of Notch’s rise to the cultural and gaming icon he is today through extensive research into Mojang and interviews with Notch. Seven Stories Press describes the book: “It is the story of unlikely success, fast money, and the power of digital technology to rattle an empire. And it is about creation, exclusion, and the feeling of not fitting in.” The authors plan to attend this year’s MineCon, the fourth annual convention dedicated to Minecraft.
Seven Stories is working directly with Mojang and the Minecraft community to include a full color photo section containing behind the scenes photos and top builder creations. For more information and suggestions on what to include, head over to the official Minecraft Facebook page.
The continued interest in Minecraft and its creators is not surprising considering Markus Persson and Jens Bergensten were recently named two of Time magazine’s 2013 list of the top 100 most influential people. Legendary developer Will Wright provides an excellent introduction to the pair, praising the game’s ability to foster creativity and learning among its community of players.
Seven Stories is taking pre-orders for the new novel at their website. As an added bonus, the first 300 people to pre-order will receive a signed edition of the book.
Sources: Seven Stories Press via Polygon; Time via Polygon
Dave Tach at Polygon summarized a press release by toy manufacturer Jazwares that they will be producing a variety of Minecraft toys, including “action figures, plush, and paper craft items” to be made available this coming holiday season. Laura Zebersky, the Executive Vice President of Global Sales for Jazwares, asserts that “Minecraft is one of the hottest brands on the planet right now,” an assertion backed by a variety of data on Minecraft’s performance across various platforms, including its spectacular showing on XBLA. Zebersky continues by saying that “the marketplace is primed for a line of toys…that reflect the fun and creativity of the game.”
Jazwares is responsible for creating a number of toys based on video game brands, including Sonic the Hedgehog, Plants vs. Zombies, Star Wars, and others. It’s worth noting that this is not the first jaunt into physical Minecraft-themed products for Mojang, as Minecraft-themed Legos have been available for some time. Minecraft continues to garner success beyond the virtual world, however, and this announcement of new Minecraft-themed toys demonstrates the continued success of the brand.
Mojang’s mega-hit Minecraft is like an epidemic (in a positive way). People flocked to the PC game in droves. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is incredibly popular as well. It’s sold over 6 million copies on XBLA, and now PlayXBLA reports the players have logged over 1 billion hours in the game. A billion! That’s 41,666,666 days, 5,952,380 weeks, or 114,079 years! Crazy.
And that number will compound, but not without a bit of a delay. The retail version of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has been delayed until June 4. According to Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson, the delay is to “include the very latest content”. Title Update 9 was released on April 5, and included The End, a new area in which players can take down the Ender Dragon and effectively end the game’s “story” (we put that lightly) mode. The update caused problems for Xbox LIVE Silver subscribers, who were told to disconnect from LIVE in order to avoid the save-breaking bug. A tenth title update is working through certification now, and addresses issues found by players. Presumably this is the only thing holding up the game’s retail release, and the June 4 date is simply to give plenty of time for the update to be released and discs pressed and sent to retailers.
Sources: PlayXBLA, Major Nelson via Joystiq
Gamasutra has published its XBLA sales analysis for the month of March, which notes some interesting movement that has shaken up recent trends. Storming onto the charts with a considerable performance late in the month is Re-Logic’s action/adventure game Terraria, which launched on March 27 and posted 127, 944 new players in its first week. According to Gamasutra, it’s one of the first games to unseat the mighty Minecraft from its number one weekly-sales position in quite some time.
Other new games to release in March didn’t perform so well, according to Gamasutra’s report. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams took second place, although it only achieved a fraction of Terraria’s player base with 2,475 new players in March. Dollar Dash managed only 2,040 new players for the month despite launching on March 6th, and WRC Powerslide fared only slightly better with 2,215 new players.
Many of XBLA’s seemingly evergreen staples continued to post impressive performances in March: Minecraft managed another 286,153 new players for the month, while free-to-play Happy Wars gained 199,055 new players. Long-time XBLA favorite Castle Crashers is still trucking along nicely, picking up 46,079 new players.
Source: Gamasutra
After the ninth title update for Minecraft caused problems for some players, 4J Studios has readied its tenth update to fix a lot of the newly caused bugs. They took to Twitter to verify what fixes are incoming, including saves not loading for Xbox Live Silver members, lighting and slow down issues, collision problems, and more. You can find a full list of fixes coming for Minecraft on the official forums.
What we are playing is a weekly column published on Sunday. Select members of the team talk about the games they’ve been playing over the past week and which they’re most looking forward to.
Kevin Plumtree - I picked up the Assassin’s Creed III season pass on sale and have subsequently caught up on the Tyranny of King Washington DLC. While not stellar, I have enjoyed it and look forward to the final chapter later this month. I have also put a lot of time into Gears of War: Judgment‘s multiplayer, especially OverRun mode. I love playing as different classes and finding strategies specifically suited for each one.
Shawn Ryan - I was busy this week, so didn’t have a chance to play much. I did continue my journey through budget titles with Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2, which is alright. I also finally picked up Mark of the Ninja during this week’s sale, and absolutely cannot wait to start it!
Ryan Thompson - I mentioned in my review that Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is excellent if the difficult platforming isn’t intimidating. I love those types of games, and spent my week playing through the game and a few retro platformers like it.
Christine Mitchell - I finished up Tomb Raider this week and loved every minute of it. I’ve now started on Terraria and while it’s quite overwhelming just now I’m looking forward to some epic adventuring.
Scott Baker - I got sucked back into the Borderlandsafter Gearbox pushed up the level cap. Ironically, I haven’t even started taking advantage of that, but I wanted to play some more of my ridiculously overpowered Anarchist Mechromancer. If you use Anarchy in conjunction with Close Enough, your dismal accuracy will be compensated for by your forgiving ricocheted bullets. Most of the time I don’t bother aiming and will just shoot the ground while everything dies around me. I even got a second wind once by killing a Loader I couldn’t see.
Nick Santangelo - I finished up BioShock Infinite this week. There’s a lot to be said for really letting experiences sink in and not throwing superlatives around — to hell with all that. Irrational’s sequel is one of the best experiences I’ve had playing a game this generation. It lived up to the almost impossibly high hype and was worth the protracted wait. I also started playing Saint’s Row: The Third. It’s fun.
Nathan Bowring – I spent most of my week playing BattleBlock Theater, a game I’ve been anticipating for what feels like forever. Thankfully the game did not disappoint; I’ve been having a blast playing the co-op campaign, and the competitive mode are pretty good too. Also dove back into Minecraft to check out the new update, but have yet to find an End portal in my new world.
Your turn.
Title Update 9 for Minecraft released earlier this week, bringing fans a new area to explore in The End, but apparently also brought some bugs along with it. Xbox Live Silver members have been reporting issues loading save files, while other users have reported lighting problems and lag. 4J Studios has responded via Twitter with a temporary fix for the save problems, telling Xbox Live Silver players to disconnect from Xbox Live before playing.
If you get “Connection to the server was lost” and are a LIVE Silver user, try disconnecting the ethernet cable. We are fixing this bug.
— 4J Studios (@4JStudios) April 4, 2013
The other issues mentioned are currently being worked on, and a fix should be available shortly for those affected.
Source: Polygon
Title Update 9 is now available for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. Along with a bunch of add-ons and fixes including climbable vines, tweaks to crafting recipes and the ability for sheep to re-grow their wool, the update also brings with it The End, a new area where players can take on the Ender Dragon monster and hordes of Endermen enemies. For the full list of updates hit the jump.
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