mojang

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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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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Call it a case of the student surpassing the teacher – Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition sold more copies in 2012 than its older, beefier PC counterpart, developer Mojang announced last week. According to a post over at EuroGamer, the XBLA edition of the world-building adventure goliath sold 5,002,370 copies last year, compared to 4,177,843 sold on PC; not bad, considering the game’s been out for less than a year on XBLA.
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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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It would seem that falsely predicting the arrival of The End is something reserved not strictly for ancient Mayan civilizations, but also for modern video game developers. Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition developer 4J Studios responded to fan questions on Twitter yesterday about the impending arrival of the floating island known as “The End” is actually not impending at all: the island will not be patched into the XBLA version of the game along with Title Update 8 (TU8), as the developer said it would back in December.

The reason for the delay is that the studio has been forced to dedicate time to creating fixes for bugs that popped up in Title Update 7 (TU7), which released on December 19. 4J tweeted that its assertion that The End would come to XBLA as part of the next title update was made “before we knew we were releasing a bug fix update for TU7. The bug fix update will be TU8, so The End will be later.”

Some of the bugs that will be addressed include one the “Kick Player” bug that freezes the player’s Xbox when the host tries to kick him or her and one that mistakenly prompts players that they cannot sleep in beds when monsters are around.

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It’s the gift that keeps being given, it seems: Mojang’s runaway indie success Minecraft continues to sell through the roof, reportedly chalking up an additional 453,000 sales across all …
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• Mojang published official sales numbers for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition as part of Gamasutra’s monthy Xbox Live Arcade sales analysis, which derives numbers from the game’s leaderboards. It currently sits at 4.47 million copies sold in just a bit over a reported time of seven months. For those who like breakdowns that’s roughly 640,000 sales per month, although in reality sales were much higher earlier on and have dropped somewhat of late.
• PlayXBLA announced the details for Minecraft‘s seventh title update. On the table are the majority of updates from the Java 1.0.1 version, minus The End. Breeding, brewing and baby animals are just a few things included in the update. 4J Studios stated via their Twitter account that The End still needs work, and that it will be part of title update 8. For a full list, hit the jump.
• Daniel Kaplan of Mojang tweeted that over 1 billion worlds have been started in Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition.

Sources: Gamasutra, PlayXBLA

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Responding to a fan question on Twitter, Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition developer 4J Studios confirmed early this morning that it has gotten the ball rolling on texture pack …
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Our friends over at PlayXBLA have posted the healthy list of changes, additions and bug fixes you can expect in the next update for Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition. Though developer 4J Studios can’t confirm a release date just yet, all signs point to the 1.8.2 Bug Fix Title Update coming soon. With nearly 50 changes under the hood, this list is extensive, so check out the full change log after the jump. Once you’ve had a good look, let us know what you think. Is there anything you’d like to see added or fixed that didn’t make the cut this time around?

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The Halloween skin pack DLC for Minecraft released on October 26th to great success, making over $500,000 in less than two weeks. All proceeds went …
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