Let me hop on my soapbox for a minute and say that Mojang really seems to be squandering the greatness that they have discovered in this game.
Minecraft's level of success is unheard of for an indie game, by a huge margin, and it's well deserved. My favorite critic quote called it something like "an end to the era of shallow games". I think they've created a new genre, or possibly multiple genres, with more potential than any one developer could realize in a lifetime.
And yet:
They hocked exclusivity rights to a marginal platform. Now they have to develop and promote a game that nobody can buy for some mysterious amount of time. I seriously doubt that whatever amount of cash Sony dumped on them was worth it.
And what they released, and attached the Minecraft name to, is a drastically dumbed down version of the game: 36 blocks, no survival, no mining, no infinite worlds, no online multiplayer. You can see the disappointment reflected in the market reviews.
I'm aware that a straight port is not technically feasible, but I'm confident that they could make something a lot closer to the desktop version if they took advantage of cloud resources and took mobile more seriously.
Notch is a very talented game designer and I think he has great vision, but maybe not enough confidence in his vision. He's still thinking like an indie developer and grasping at opportunities.
He's still thinking like an indie developer and grasping at opportunities.
Or perhaps he's thinking incrementally. Notch has always been a big proponent of incremental development, rather than keeping a game secret and releasing it only when it's done.
They've said as much, but that process works a lot better for obscure indie desktop games than for mobile apps trying to capitalize on fame. A lot of potential new players are going buy it to see what all the fuss is about, not see the point of it, and move on.
If the mobile version is being developed independently of the desktop version, then it's always going to lag way behind and not share the same base of players. It's the t-shirt, not the game.
Not only has he limited himself to Android (you notice no other mobile platforms in your list there) he's chosen to take an exclusivity deal from Sony so that it's artificially limited to only the Xperia Play for at least a month or two.
Android is Java based ... Minecraft is java based ... seems only logical Android is first. I don't really see it going to any other OS myself... maybe the Win7 phone when the xbox version is completed. I bet that payment from Sony was to convert it, I doubt they had plans to ship to xperia otherwise. If it sells as well as the PSP it will hardly be marginal.
And one to two month is hardly exclusive, its just a marketing gamble by Sony.
I believe there is good reason for the game being dumbed down for the mobile version. An intense session of Minecraft probably won't translate so well to mobile - UI in particular possess a legit challenge for a game originally designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind.
Regarding the platform: I don't know how relevant it is, but Minecraft was written in Java. Android apps are normally written in Java. Maybe this was simply the path of least resistance?
Minecraft's level of success is unheard of for an indie game, by a huge margin, and it's well deserved. My favorite critic quote called it something like "an end to the era of shallow games". I think they've created a new genre, or possibly multiple genres, with more potential than any one developer could realize in a lifetime.
And yet:
They hocked exclusivity rights to a marginal platform. Now they have to develop and promote a game that nobody can buy for some mysterious amount of time. I seriously doubt that whatever amount of cash Sony dumped on them was worth it.
And what they released, and attached the Minecraft name to, is a drastically dumbed down version of the game: 36 blocks, no survival, no mining, no infinite worlds, no online multiplayer. You can see the disappointment reflected in the market reviews.
I'm aware that a straight port is not technically feasible, but I'm confident that they could make something a lot closer to the desktop version if they took advantage of cloud resources and took mobile more seriously.
Notch is a very talented game designer and I think he has great vision, but maybe not enough confidence in his vision. He's still thinking like an indie developer and grasping at opportunities.