minecraft-portal posts

Minecraft continues to be one of the biggest hits in indie PC game history so you might expect that there is a lot of interest in both the game and the person who created it Markus "Notch" Persson (the guy in the picture above, in case you didn't know). This week it was revealed that a documentary on the indie sandbox game and the people behind it is being produced.

The folks behind the documentary are 2 Player Productions who have done a number of short documentaries centering on the game industry. They have also been hired by game publishers to create behind-the-scenes shorts on games. There's no specifics on exactly what we will see in this new production but we shouldn't have to wait long to find out; a "tweet" from 2 Player Productions states that it should be ready sometime in February.

[Via Joystiq]

The official Minecraft web site has been a victim of the indie sandbox game's huge sales success. After a ton of traffic brough the site down earlier this week the development team moved it to a cloud based system. On his blog site, Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson stated, "We've got five servers behind a load balancer, and a dedicated server for payment processing, and another for ingame authentication and login, although that won't be in use until we update the game launcher." However the web site's sales and player stats for Minecraft are not yet back up to speed.

Yes, the game is getting a new game launcher soon and the above image is a preview of what it will look like when it goes live. As Persson states, "When you start the game, the launcher will ask you if you want to download the new update or not. Eventually there will also be an option in the launcher to choose where to load/save maps from."

If you have been having issues getting to the Minecraft web site in the past day or so you are not alone. The official web site for the indie sandbox game has been getting hit with a massive amount of traffic. Thankfully the blog site of Minecraft's creator, Markus "Notch" Persson, is on a seperate system. He posts that the server is now moving to a new system, saying, "We've got a huge amazon cloud server which we're moving the main server to. We'll be able to replicate this as demand grows, and we'll have a load balancer set up in front of it all."

He also has an update on the game itself, saying that he and his team are working on a new file format for Minecraft along with a new game launcher. He states, "The new Launcher will be a bit prettier, will show release notes and other news, will send login requests over https (finally), and will ask if the user wants to update to the latest version or not."

Minecraft remains the go-to game for creating weird in-game structures and now a programmer has figured out a way to link the sandbox game to Microsoft's Kinect motion controller for the Xbox 360. Specifically, the programmer can take a Kinect snapshot and then create a Minecraft-based file to have that info show up in the game.

Nathan Viniconis goes step-by-step on how this was accomplished on his web site. It's definitely on the technical side but if you can go through the steps you should be able to make some really interesting Minecraft structures. By the way, Minecraft is getting even closer to selling 1 million units. It should reach that point by sometime Thursday.

[Via Kotaku]

If you want to give something cool for your PC gaming friends, consider giving them the gift of Minecraft. The hit indie sandbox game is now offering gift codes for you to send to friends and get them addicted to building, exploring and generally having fun.

There's an extra incentive to getting gift codes for the game right away. Any code that's bought between now and the time Minecraft goes into beta on December 20 will be considered a purchase of the game during its current alpha phase. That means that even if the person getting the code doesn't use it until after the game goes into beta it will still register as buying an alpha version which means free Minecraft updates from now until, well, forever. It looks like the gift code offer has already caused an uptick in the game's sales.

In related news the game's official web site has gotten a bit of a face lift with the promise of more updates to come.

Saturday's news that Minecraft would be entering its beta stage on December 20, causing the overall price of the indie sandbox game to increase, has caused a surge in sales of the game while still in its cheaper alpha stage. According to stats from the game's official web site over 11,000 units have been sold in the past 24 hours, which is over twice what the game was selling just before the beta announcement.

Meanwhile the game's creator Markus "Notch" Persson is answering fan questions about the beta release on his Twitter page. One response talks about future game updates. He states, "Minecraft Alpha (soon Minecraft Beta) will get a creative mode. There will also be a free demo. These might overlap, not sure yet,:

Ever since the game's release back in May 2009, the indie-made sandbox game Minecraft has technically been made available as an alpha build. That hasn't stopped the game from generating an unbelieveable fan base and sales that currently total over 725,000 units. Today the game's developer Markus "Notch" Persson announced on his blog that Minecraft is now very close to entering its beta phase.

How close? Persson states that the beta version will go live on December 20. As he states, "With Beta comes a larger focus on polish and content, and we'll start early on with adding proper modding support with a stable API, and we'd love all input we can get on this from the modders out there." Look for an actual narrative to Minecraft to be added for the early parts of the game as well as a goal to achieve in the later parts of the game.

Pricing for the game will also go up to 14.95 Euros when the beta launches. After beta starts, the promise that all future versions will be free will be removed so if you want to get the game for a cheaper price and be assured of getting future versions at no cost, now is the time. Look for a new update to the game before it hits beta sometime next week. Also look for gift codes for Minecraft to be made available soon which, if used by December 20, will count as buying the alpha version.

Minecraft is about to enter into the next phase of its popularity. The indie-made sandbox game is going to be releasing some official merchandise with the first items due to come out in early December, just in time for holiday shopping. The news comes from the newly launched Minecraft dev diary on the PC Gamer web site written by Jakob Porser, who is a co-founder of Mojang Specifications, the new studio formed thanks to the massive sales of MineCraft.

Porser says of the Minecraft gift items, "We are still discussing different products to add, and some require more time to create then others." However he hints strongly that Creeper plush toys similar to the one shown (made by a fan) are on their way.

Yep, it's time for yet another sales success story for Minecraft. The indie-made sandbox game broke yet another milestone earlier today when its stats registered that it had broken the 600,000 unit sales barrier. While the game was first released back in May 2009, most of its sales have been generated in the past few months. It reached the 500,000 unit sales level on October 29.

If it continues at its current sales pace, Minecraft could reach the 1 million sales level in early 2011. That's incredible for a downloadable only indie PC game that is still in the alpha stage of development.