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More Minecraft skins announced
12 years ago

More Minecraft skins announced

Minecraft will be getting its first Skin Pack along with the release of the 1.7.3 update. The pack will have a total of 40 skins, the majority of which are currently shrouded in mystery. Five more skins have emerged from the fog, bravely showing themselves to the world in all their pixelated glory. The five newest character to join the pack are: Jack of Blades, Clayton Carmine, Banjo, Ms Splosion Man, and a Prisoner. There are still 30 character to be announced, but so far the pack looks amazing. We can’t wait to see more XBLA character getting the Minecraft treatment. There is currently no release date or price for Skin Pack 1.

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Minecraft Skin Pack 1 will release alongside 1.7.3 update
12 years ago

Minecraft Skin Pack 1 will release alongside 1.7.3 update

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Minecraft players have been anxiously awaiting the 1.7.3 update that will drop later this month, but the newly announced Skin Pack DLC will make the update even sweeter. The pack will include 40 skins, including both original skins and skins inspired by other games. Five skins have been announced so far: Creeper, Covenant Grunt, King, Splosion Man, and Trials Man. Although the 1.7.3 update will be free, the Skin Pack will come with a price tag. Fortunately, there will be a free trial of the DLC, so you can view all the skins and take some out for a spin before deciding on a purchase. Once the DLC drops the 8 default Steve skins can also be worn whenever you like. Skins will no longer be changed by default when joining multiplayer, so you be whoever you want, even if somebody else is already using that skin. There is currently no release date or price, but the DLC will drop around the time of the update. So, what characters do you want to appear in the skin pack?

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Microsoft’s Minecraft deal was made just before its announcement
12 years ago

Microsoft’s Minecraft deal was made just before its announcement

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Microsoft and 4J Studios bringing Mojang’s world-building simulator, Minecraft, over to Xbox Live Arcade was a big deal when it was announced and was promoted as such by grabbing some of the spotlight during Microsoft’s pre-E3 2011 media briefing. As such, it stands to reason that the console holder and the Swedish studio behind the original version of the game hammered out a deal months ahead of time before carefully fine-tuning the specifics of its E3 announcement. Sure, that’s reasonable all right, but that’s not the way it happened, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios Phil Spencer recently informed Destructoid.

“So I have a funny ‘behind the curtains’ story on Minecraft,” Spencer explained. “It was about a week before E3 last year when we made that deal as a first party. I believed in the project and we knew the studio. The graphic behind me last year on stage — if you were like, ‘What is that?’ it’s because it was created in one night. Even the people inside Microsoft, as they were looking at it, were thinking, ‘What is that Minecraft thing and why are we putting it on stage?'”

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Update: Big list of features and fixes coming to Minecraft Today!
12 years ago

Update: Big list of features and fixes coming to Minecraft Today!

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Update: The patch will be downloadable Today, June 15th, 2012.

At 2 million units sold, Minecraft is a hit amongst gamers and it’s still continuing to improve over time. With the promise of patches and updates, we’ve got first word of a list of fixes and features coming soon from Play XBLA. To name a few including autosaves, gamertag display in split-screen, and enabling/disabling settings with hints and tooltips. Read the jump to catch the rest of the list and we’ll let you know when this will be available to you crafters alike.
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Minecraft has sold over 2 million copies on XBLA
12 years ago

Minecraft has sold over 2 million copies on XBLA

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The 4J Studios port of Mojang’s world-building PC title,

Minecraft getting craftier through a pair of free updates
12 years ago

Minecraft getting craftier through a pair of free updates

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Minecraft for Xbox Live Arcade will be getting its first free update in just a couple weeks, Roger Carpenter, lead producer of the fastest-selling game to ever hit the platform, has informed XBLA Fans. Digital crafters can look forward to what has been dubbed an interim update fixing a number of bugs when it arrives. Carpenter confirmed that dummy glitches, sleeping, clay issues and more will be remedied when it goes live.

A more robust update (1.7.3) will then follow at an undetermined date in July. Designed as the first in a series of post-release downloads to bring the port up to speed with the PC version, 1.7.3 will not include any additional Achievements due to it being free. (Those players who feel the itch to bump up their Gamerscore need not necessarily worry: traditional Xbox Live DLC with extra Achievements is being considered for sometime down the line.)

 
[springboard type=”video” id=”496935″ player=”xbla001″ width=”640″ height=”400″ ] Unfortunately the size of the maps (1024 by 1024 blocks) is not set to be bumped up yet. The reason, says Carpenter, is that the game’s creators want to make sure they have sufficient room to expand the game as it grows. Any PC bugs that were not fixed until later updates will not be taken care of with 1.7.3, but, as mentioned, the plan is to eventually update Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition enough so that it matches up with the PC version.

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Microsoft offering refunds to Minecraft buyers with SDTVs
12 years ago

Microsoft offering refunds to Minecraft buyers with SDTVs

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Microsoft, in response to a deluge of complaints from SDTV owners unable to play splitscreen Minecraft, has revised the game’s overview on the Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace, reports …
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Minecraft was the most played XBLA game last week
12 years ago

Minecraft was the most played XBLA game last week

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The Xbox 360 port of Minecraft was the most popular XBLA game during the one week period beginning May 7, according to Major Nelson. Minecraft also pulled into …
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Minecraft sells over one million copies in less than a week
12 years ago

Minecraft sells over one million copies in less than a week

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Trials Evolution, RedLynx‘s wonderfully infuriating sequel, broke records a few weeks ago. After a day, Mojang‘s build-em-up Minecraft looked set to beat that record. Microsoft has now confirmed Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition has eclipsed previous XBLA …
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Minecraft turns quick profit; Polytron questions MS policies [Updated]
12 years ago

Minecraft turns quick profit; Polytron questions MS policies [Updated]

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Update: Polytron, following up on Mojang’s reporting of Minecraft figures based off of Xbox Live leaderboards, tapped Microsoft on the shoulder and questioned them as to whether or not the leaderboards are a legitimate gauge for sales numbers. As it turns out, just as the Fez developer had earlier alleged, they are not. “Hey so, Microsoft got back to us about sale[s] figures,” the studio tweeted. “Turns out the leaderboards ARE inaccurate!”

Quickly following that news was another statement by the dev elucidating that Microsoft showed no favoritism towards Mojang in terms of handing out sales data. But that doesn’t mean the studio believes the entire playing field is even. Earlier, Polytron expressed its discontent over Minecraft being granted the ability to receive free post-release content. Sticking to its guns, Polytron stated that favoritism was shown by the publisher in the way of “the free updates.”

Still, Poly, in a tweet directed at the media, called upon caps lock to underscore its belief that Microsoft’s actions were “NOT A SCANDAL.” It should also be noted that Polytron extended public congratulations to Markus Persson for having a successful launch on XBLA. Further details can be found in the primary story below.

Original Story: An hour was all it took. Within 60 minutes of Swedish developer Mojang’s XBLA port of its mega-popular PC world-building title Minecraft releasing yesterday, a profit had been turned. Studio owner Markus “Notch” Persson relayed the news over Twitter earlier today: “Well then. Saw the official sales numbers for the first 24 hours of Minecraft Xbox 360, and it’s very, very good. Profitable in an hour.”

After selling in excess of five million copies to date over on the PC, according to IGN, Minecraft managed to smash “all previous digital sales records” on the Xbox 360, Microsoft revealed in a statement that surfaced shortly after Persson’s tweet. Microsoft, who published the Arcade version of the game, said that no other release in the history of the platform had garnered as many sales as Mojang’s debut effort did in its first 24 hours of availability. The publisher declined, however, to identify just how many individual sales that record equated to.

Yet not everyone was silent on that matter. After having some public discussion over Microsoft’s policies regarding the divulging of precise sales numbers with Fez developer Polytron, Persson gave a ballpark figure. “It seems it sold over 400k copies in 24 [hours],” he tweeted. The creative brain behind Minecraft apparently had to rely on leaderboard participation in order to extrapolate that number, a method which he admitted “might be off.” If his calculations are correct, that would mean the port, developed in part by 4J Studios, has already brought in more than $8 million USD in revenue.

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