Folks who can’t pony up the dough for an HDTV are up in arms over the lack of splitscreen  gameplay in Minecraft. It’s not broken or anything–at least that’s what they say. But SDTV players are entirely locked out of any splitscreen games, the option only available if your console is hooked up to some sort of HD output, Kotaku reports. It’s left some players on the Xbox.com forums completely clueless as to the problem, while others up in arms. It’s something that most reviews, including our own, didn’t catch–so yes, SDTV gamers are few and far between.

We’ve spoken our distaste about this recently, but this goes far beyond not being able to read text. This is locking players out of major features, players who spent money with no warning they’d be locked out. Players who are confused and mad. Take a look at just a few of the complaints below.

Hi. Just bought a £43 controller for my friend, So we could play splitscreen. I’ve plugged it in, Nothing happens. The controller works, You can hit the xbox button and it opens the menu, when I plug it in there’s no indication that the game found the controller? I’ve seen videos, It’s supposed to say Press start, Mine doesn’t. Help would be appreciated !!

Another user writes:

Just wanna meantion this to people that dont have a HDTV. This may be why some people are saying they cant get splitscreen working, the game requires a HDTV to use splitscreen. This makes no sense. I have a HDTV but i just needed to meantion this since ive seen a few people ask about splitscreen.

Microsoft, Mojang and 4J Studios have yet to comment on the issue.

Source: Kotaku