Minecraft for Kinect is an XBLA title, ported by 4J Studios

by Ben Gilbert on Jun 16th 2011 1:50PM

More details have begun to trickle out on Swedish developer Mojang Studios' first Xbox 360 title, a Kinect-enabled port of indie hit Minecraft. Beyond the fact that it'll be some form of indirect port and that an unnamed developer other than Mojang was at the helm, few other details were known, but as Minecraft creative lead Markus "Notch" Persson revealed on his Twitter feed last night, Scottish devs 4J Studios are apparently in charge of this holiday's world-builder.

If you, like us, are unfamiliar with 4J, a cursory Wikipedia'ing reveals work on a wealth of ports, not to mention a handful of not-so-well-known original games. Hopefully any worry you have in the studio's confidence is abated by the fact that Notch will remain a game designer on the project, presumably retaining creative oversight.

Source: Twitter

Tags: 4j-studios, kinect, markus-notch-persson, markus-persson, microsoft, Minecraft, mojang, mojang-studios, notch, port, scotland, XBLA, xbox

Reader Comments (60)

They really should add a tutorial or something to make the game more accessible to people.

@Raffi256 it's still in beta.

@Fire Walk With Me

Yeah but they can't release unstable stuff on XBLA, it has to pass compliance. But it's supposed to go out of beta at the end of the year anyway.

@Raffi256
Almost a guarantee that there will be a tutorial. Consoles are directed for more of the casual players and I have never seen an XBLA game (so far in my Game Library) that doesn't have at least a brief in-game tut.

@Raffi256
I feel like an idiot saying this but -- it took me a whole minecraft dayand night cycle to realise that you need to hold the button down to break blocks. That was a freaking scary night man.

After that, it's pretty self explanatory.
Although, they should give you more and more "reciepes" for making items on each passing day. That'ld be a great way to ease players into the game.

@Raffi256

"They really should add a tutorial or something to make the game more accessible to people."

ummm did you not notice the achievements? they seem like a tutorial to me. (thats because it is)

@Raffi256 Assuming they're puting this out on November 11 along with the formal "release" of Minecraft, it'll probably be a little more coherent then.

@PR0F3TA

C'mon, it's a huge stretch to call that a tutorial.

@PR0F3TA

No no no no. Not even close. The achievements mention some things you can do, but not how to do it or why.

@Raffi256

I think a tutorial would ruin the way you organically learn to play the game. Minecraft is all about exploration and creativity and personally I think a tutorial would be counterintuitive to the very nature of the game. - Click, gather, build should be enough to get started.

@Raffi256 if you google "Minecraft Tutorial" you get 21,000,000 results. Why invest the time and money in a tutorial when the internet has done it already?

@Arsenal At the very least they should include a recipe guide though. I would never have guessed that's how you make pickaxes.

@Fire Walk With Me use to be, "it's only in alpha"

thats all well and good but what I wanna know is can I access my current minecraft world or will I have to start over and can I use a controller if they said you could I have yet to notice

@ansalon929
Notch has said that Kinect is optional.

@Snowblind
good now can I access my current world it would be nice if I could chill on my couch and finish my fort on the 360

@ansalon929 I think that they would leave it with a controller. As much as they want to advertise Kinect you can't port a game from PC to Console which already has a lot less buttons than a keyboard and take away from that.

@Snappyguy You mean, if the game takes advantage of alot of the keyboard right?
Because I play minecraft with WSAD and a mouse. nothing else. And a controller really has more than enough buttons to compensate. And I can thing of several schemes for Kinect that would work just as well, albeit requiring more activity on the users part.

And we all know alot of gamers are such lazy asses they are going to comeplain about a control scheme that requires you to be more active. EVEN IF IT'S OPTIONAL.

If they're doing a kinect enabled version they should definitely include the object builder hack thing that people made. That was so awesome. I could imagine people building lego castles and then importing them into the game :O

Their work with Banjo and Perfect Dark was excellent. Seeing how Minecraft has the appearance of being from the same era, I expect a solid *looking* port at the very least.

Havn't played it yet. Will wait for kinect version.

Just curious, how will the 360 version restrict itself to work on it's hardware?

Even on high priced gaming rigs, if you set off enough explosions, you can crash the game. Just curious if they'll have an object limit, or whatever to make sure the console version is more stable.

@Shockwave
I'm sure there will be a limit to your creativity but to have a well-off user-designed level won't probably explode your console up (if they do it well enough). What I really want to see is Kinect-enabled gameplay. I hope it's not just picking up objects and dropping them as if you had 'the Force'. Quick navigation through voice would be a nice add-on.

@Shockwave
The 360 version isn't running on java :)

Hopefully this leads to the PC version being switched to something a little more stable in the future too.

@Shockwave

Interesting, I never new about numerous explosions causing crashes, and umm, about how many explosions are required to cause a crash? *looks at work PC with ill intent.*

@Shockwave

That's actually a good point, it's an infinite game world. And consoles have limited RAM with no swap, and limited storage space or no storage space. Not a good platform for a game like this unless they add limits to the game.

@Raffi256

There can be a swap on a system with a hard drive, though I doubt MS would allow this game to require the hard drive. Either way, I'm guessing there will be heavy fog on the 360 version.

@Snowblind Yeah, but if it's not in Java, you can't play it in a browser at work.

@PoisonedAl

Flash and Silverlight say "hi"

@Raffi256

Storage space will probably be fine. My biggest Minecraft world is only 200mb or so, and that's from eight people exploring and building stuff for the last year.

And yeah, explosions can crash your computer if you build a tower with 300+ TNT and detonate it. Most of the time you're fine.

Does street fighter 2 hd remix come with a tutorial?

If you need a tutorial to pull off a shoryuken... You're not a gamer...

Just curious, where is it confirmed that this will be an XBLA title? Haven't seen anything other than the XBLA tag on Wikipedia and this story. It makes sense that it would be, but I haven't seen any sort of confirmation.

@MagikOvenMit It was announced at E3

Awesome Minecraft Pillar of Autumn!

@AfroKola

It looks more like the USNC's Grafton. Yes, i Googled that one up, I by no means am up to date with all my Halo ship classes/ names. ;p

@AfroKola But... Pillar of Autumn is a Halcyon class ship. That that looks NOTHING like a Halcyon. It looks closer to a corvette, or what "In Amber Clad" is. It's just missing the nacelles.

wats the ship thingy in the picture? scuse my ignorance

Man, I hope the console port doesn't compromise the graphics too much.

@Joeybeast old joke is old

@Fire Walk With Me old reply is old

Man...glad I didn't download that Fortress Craft on XBLA....I wanted to try it to see what the deal was seeing as I never played the PC version but I hear loads about it...how good is it? I mean on a funfactor aspect. not asking graphically of course...I suppose I should just go download it and try it.

@Daithlee yeh thank god you saved that dollar. wait i just found a quarter in the couch. 1/4 of the way to fortress craft.

@Fire Walk With Me

LOL...Wait?...the game is only a buck? Man, don't I look cheap and dumb...but still......does it have an awesome sound track like I Made a Game With Zombies In It cause I'm gonna level with you...I only brought game because of the theme song and that was for a buck also lol...

@Daithlee most games on Indie are a buck. A trend I Made A Geam started as well. Indie's first hit!

@Fire Walk With Me

Okay, two things:

A. Foretresscraft is $3 and

B. Indie games can only be 1, 3, or 5 dollars, and pricing is partially determined by the size of the game. It's not really accurate to credit IMaGwZii with "starting the trend."

@Acosta02 A. I admittedly didnt pay attention since it was too much of a copy. B. Started the trend in that it was the first one to ever sell. First indie game period.

I'd still like to know if this is only a timed exclusive deal for the 360 like half of their other games. I already have it for my PC and love it, but it would be fun to play it on my PS3 too.

@Ospov timed exclusive with minecraft i loled

@Fire Walk With Me

Timed exclusive console-wise. I'm very aware it's already on PC since I have it. It's going to be on the Xperia Play too which is a Sony device. It won't be the whole game, but at least it's something. It's not like Microsoft owns Mojang or anything. I don't get what's so funny...

Could be in the minority, but since there's not going to be any mods for this I'm hoping that it comes out of the gate with enhanced textures and maybe some ambient occlusion.

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Minecraft

Minecraft for Kinect is an XBLA title, ported by 4J Studios

Reader Comments (60)

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 1:51PM Raffi256 said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 1:56PM Fire Walk With Me said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:13PM Raffi256 said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:15PM GamingColt said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:17PM BlackedOut said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:32PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:39PM Once known as Shadsy said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:49PM Raffi256 said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:58PM Acosta02 said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 3:18PM Arsenal said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 4:02PM simblor said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 5:50PM Once known as Shadsy said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 8:48PM ManofPeace said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 1:57PM ansalon929 said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:02PM Snowblind said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:05PM ansalon929 said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:12PM Snappyguy said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 4:35PM Robborboy said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 1:58PM collinc said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:00PM Epoque said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:01PM TenEightyPeewee said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:02PM Shockwave said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:14PM GamingColt said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:15PM Snowblind said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:17PM Negatron said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:55PM Raffi256 said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 5:18PM Vidikron said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 7:47PM PoisonedAl said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 8:19PM Ordeith said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 9:36PM Colin said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:54PM Timjoy said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:17PM MagikOvenMit said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:30PM collinc said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:17PM AfroKola said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:51PM Negatron said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 4:37PM Robborboy said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:42PM peter pham said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 2:43PM Joeybeast said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 3:07PM Fire Walk With Me said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 3:18PM collinc said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 3:07PM Daithlee said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 3:08PM Fire Walk With Me said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 3:16PM Daithlee said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 3:27PM Fire Walk With Me said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 3:47PM Acosta02 said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 4:03PM Fire Walk With Me said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 3:08PM Ospov said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 3:09PM Fire Walk With Me said

Posted: Jun 17th 2011 2:10PM Ospov said

Posted: Jun 16th 2011 4:07PM Crayola Q Pants ESQ said

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