4J Studios

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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It’s been a long time coming, but Minecraft‘s ninth update is almost here. TU9 has passed Microsoft certification and is going to drop Friday, April 5. While the update will contain a slew of new features, it is most notable for the long-awaited arrival of the The End, home of the Ender Dragon. The boss fight has been made more difficult for the Xbox 360 Edition of the game, but the adventure to The End still remains the same. If you’re not already familiar with the process, 4J has kindly created a trailer showing how to reach The End step-by-step.

Check out the full list of changes of changes after the jump.

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Have you played Minecraft? With the newly released sales figures for the game, odds are high that you have. 4J Studios, the developer behind the mega-hit, took to Twitter …
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This September, Minecraft builds its empire by venturing into the world of print with the help of UK publishing house Egmont. The new line of officially licensed books will launch with four handbooks designed to entertain and educate beginners and experts alike. The books include: The Beginner’s Handbook, The Redstone Handbook, The Combat Handbook, and The Construction Handbook–each title is fairly self-explanatory in what readers will find between the covers.

Egmont hopes to offer engaging books that introduce readers to the world-building game in a unique format while also offering exclusive material from Mojang not available online. After the first set of handbooks, there will be a Minecraft Annual, Minecraft Poster Book, and an All About Minecraft Magazine. Additional titles in the series are planned for next year.

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Though it’s not yet official, it looks like Minecraft fans in the United States can look forward to another MineCon. According to Joystiq, Lydia Winters, director of fun at …
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The End is near…in Minecraft, that is. 4J Studios has been hard at work on the game’s ninth title update, which will feature a long list of changes and fixes. No addition is bigger than that of The End, a new dimension that is home to the deadly Ender Dragon. Official Xbox Magazine has received some details on how the game’s final boss will differ from the PC version. For starters, the dragon’s healing crystals are now enclosed by iron bars, making them a lot harder to take out with arrows. The dragon also has a new attack in which it spits up purple acid. The boss fight is designed to be harder on XBLA than PC, so be sure to bring some spare armor and plenty of pork chops.

Not all new features will be huge, as evidenced by a cluster of screenshots tweeted by 4J. There’s a lot of changes hidden within these screens, but here’s what we spotted: wood plank varieties, item frames, stackable buckets, wooden buttons, smelting nether brick, a potion menu in creative mode and a new gravel texture. There’s obviously a lot to look forward to in the next update, with more to be announced as the release draws nearer. Speaking of which, TU9 currently does not have a launch date but is not expected to drop this month.

If you can’t stand the wait, maybe some new Minecraft-themed avatar items will make it more bearable. Eleven new items have been added to the Minecraft collection, including new heads, shirts and props based on creatures both friendly and foul. Head inside to take a look at all of the new items and check out PlayXBLA for more information.

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While physical retail software sales appear to have trailed off at this stage in the  Xbox 360’s life cycle, XBLA has reportedly experienced its strongest year yet in 2012. …
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The fix is in for the next round of changes coming to 4J Studios’ Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. The best-selling XBLA title of 2012 will get patched up with a host of new changes, tweaks and bug-squashing fixes with the release of Title Update 8. As we reported earlier this month, Minecraft‘s endgame content event, aptly titled “The End”, was pushed from production of the forthcoming update, citing a need to concentrate on a number of issues that popped up with the release of Title Update 7. Everyone eagerly awaiting the chance to duke it out with the infamous Ender Dragon can breathe easy knowing the content has been rescheduled for Title Update 9.

As for the many fixes stuffed into this release, you can expect things to be getting back to normal within the blocky reaches of your biomes. Appearing on PlayXBLA, the finalized change list is quick to address the many crashes and freezes introduced in the previous update, including: the random Kick Player crash, the random crash when loading the tutorial, and the dreaded sign-writing/autosave freeze.

What’s more, these fixes are merely the tip of the iceberg. With nearly forty items in tow, Title Update 8 should help to smooth things over while you chip away at that fortress you’ve been meaning to finish. There’s no official word as to when this panacea will be administered, though 4J Studios issued a tentative schedule of “this month” via their official Twitter page, when asked by a curious fan.

Hit the jump for the complete, lengthy list of fixes and changes coming with Title Update 8.

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Hollywood doesn’t like pirates. The movie industry continues to use the full firepower of its impressively financed and outfitted armada to sink skull and crossbones banner-flying sites sailing through the dark waters of the internet; sites which it claimed as recently as January of last year to be responsible for costing the U.S. economy $200–250 billion per year and for killing 750,000 American jobs.

Though the Government Accountability Office has since reported those numbers to be bogus, no one can deny that internet pirates are plundering at least some of the movie business’ potential earnings. That’s why the Motion Picture Association of America was hopeful in November over the prospect of President Obama’s re-election helping it make progress in its war on pirates.

But Portland, Oregon — home to Minecraft: The Story of Mojang documentary maker 2 Player Productions — is most certainly not Hollywood. Still, one approach studio founders Pawl Owens, Paul Levering and Asif Siddiky have taken to promoting their film about original Minecraft creator Mojang is unorthodox to say the least.

They pirated it.

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Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews and features from the week into one handy post on the weekends.

It was a busy week for two of 2012’s biggest XBLA games: The Walking Dead and Minecraft. Minecraft saw its The End content delayed out of its next title update to some unknown future point. Meanwhile, we learned that The Walking Dead has sold a lot of episodes, that it may allow players to carry over saves to the next season and that gamers who bought a faulty Xbox 360 retail version of season one will be given a free XBLA copy. If you’re still looking for more XBLA coverage, be sure to keep an eye on the site every weeknight this week as we detail the biggest games coming to Xbox Live Arcade in 2013. What games are you looking forward to this year? Let us know in the comments below.

Here’s our week in review:

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