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Markus “Notch” Persson, the Swedish developer behind the immensely popular Minecraft, has revealed a plan of action for the upcoming Xbox 360 version of the game.
“The way we’re going to do it is similar to how we did Minecraft on the PC.” Persson explained to Develop, “So we’ll do a beta version first or something like that and then try to get feedback – find out which parts are actually fun to do, what do you like doing when playing on the console as opposed to the PC. I think there will be a big overlap in terms of both console and PC players, and they can help us figure it out.”
“So the things we are starting with right now is just trying to make the game playable on 360. But the biggest challenge at the moment is figuring out the crafting, because just porting it straight out the box turns what is really fun on PC into boring data entry on a 360 pad. That’s the thing we are working on right now. The Kinect feautures are going to be one of the more interesting aspects, too.”
The 360 version of Minecraft isn’t being developed by Mojang – Persson realised the project needed a studio with experience developing for consoles.
“None of us have done any console games before because it takes quite a lot of resources, which is why we’re using another company called 4J, in Dundee, Scotland. They have great experience in working with Microsoft and seem to be a perfect fit for us.”
Even though the PC game is still in the beta stages, Minecraft today surpassed 3 million sales.
Minecraft is due for release on Xbox 360 this winter.
It’s strange to think, even with 3 million sales under its belt, that Minecraft still has so much ahead of it. The full version of the game is due for release in November, and a whole new market will get to experience it when the 360 version launches soon after. Notch must be a pretty happy bunny right about now.
