Xbox 360 Split-Screen Offers a New Way To Play Minecraft
Saying the word "change" in the same sentence as "Minecraft" can really set off a lot of alarms. Mojang's open-world crafting phenomenon has been tweaked, rearranged, expanded, and adjusted many times since its rise to popularity in the fall of 2010. But with each new version number comes some grumbles and complaints—after all, the game was great when it started; why does it need to change?
But the only constant in life is change, and as timeless and fundamentally sound as Minecraft may be, there are still ways that it can be improved. I saw one of those ways at Microsoft's Spring Showcase last week.
The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft will be, for all intents and purposes, Minecraft. That was what Microsoft producer Roger Carpenter said as we sat down with the game: "Well, it's Minecraft." Lionhead is losing founder, Fable creator and game development legend Peter Molyneux after Fable: The Journey is complete - but what will the veteran designer, who has such games as Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park and Black and White on his CV, do next?
"The world is coming along with Smart glass and Kinect and Motion tracking and face tracking and cloud and multiple device gaming and now is the time to be crazy," Molyneux told games™ magazine last week at Microsoft's Spring showcase event.
"It’s not the time to be conservative; a few years ago we could be conservative when we had our nice comfortable safe controllers, our safe consoles that was it there was no more than that," Molyneux explained. "Well now we’re in a whole new era and that era is about exploring, creating and playing with ideas because our consumers – our gamers, our core gamers, our social gamers the entire world – are looking to this industry and are saying 'excite us'. Innovate."
Minecraft is just one inspiration for Molyneux's brave new world.
"Games like Minecraft show that if you just break those rules, those solid foundation stones that have become millstones round our neck then wonderful things happen," Molyneux explained.
"I love Marcus Persson because he broke the rules, he had a game without tutorials, he had a game where you can just walk off into the sunset for forever and ever and he had a game where every block can change and that shouldn’t work. I can remember talking to people in all sorts of organisations where they said that’s rubbish it’s never going to work. Where is his tutorial? [Laughs]. Now they’re laughing on the other side of their face." everything you know and love about Minecraft is here (short of the ability to mod the game as you can mod the PC version). It works well with the controller, and is just about exactly what you'd picture when you picture Minecraft running on an Xbox 360. However, there's one crucial new feature—four-player split-screen multiplayer.
(Note: The image at the top is actually a photoshop job.)
While the core single player will remain unchanged, I could easily see split-screen substantially changing the way that people play Minecraft. I love the meditative, compulsive single-player aspect of the game, but the multiplayer is where things start to get really interesting. It takes a very long time to build something in the game (without using cheats, that is), and the more people you have tackling a project, the more ambitious you can be.
I also haven't explored the multiplayer space that much—it can be hard to find the right server, and to coordinate with friends. So the idea of having three friends over and spending the afternoon goofing around and building things in Minecraft together, in the same room, sounds like a load of fun. PC players have been working on split-screen mods for some time, but this builds split-screen into the main game and makes it really easy to use. Even better, 1-4 players can team up with other players online with easy drop-in, drop-out, and up to eight players can play together.
I'd imagine local co-op to be a different kind of multiplayer than the hardcore, massive efforts of PC players who are building, say, cities from Game of Thrones together. But rather than even attempting to replace that outlet, this multiplayer will simply add to it, and appeal to a new demographic.
Carpenter told me that he plays this game every night with his son, which sounds like a fantastic way to spent time gaming with your family. Just as with Minecraft, the possibilities for split-screen gaming seem endless, just because it would be so much fun to be in the same room with people as you build things.
Saying the word "change" in the same sentence as "Minecraft" can really set off a lot of alarms. Mojang's open-world crafting phenomenon has been tweaked, rearranged, expanded, and adjusted many times since its rise to popularity in the fall of 2010. But with each new version number comes some grumbles and complaints—after all, the game was great when it started; why does it need to change?
But the only constant in life is change, and as timeless and fundamentally sound as Minecraft may be, there are still ways that it can be improved. I saw one of those ways at Microsoft's Spring Showcase last week.
The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft will be, for all intents and purposes, Minecraft. That was what Microsoft producer Roger Carpenter said as we sat down with the game: "Well, it's Minecraft." Lionhead is losing founder, Fable creator and game development legend Peter Molyneux after Fable: The Journey is complete - but what will the veteran designer, who has such games as Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park and Black and White on his CV, do next?
"The world is coming along with Smart glass and Kinect and Motion tracking and face tracking and cloud and multiple device gaming and now is the time to be crazy," Molyneux told games™ magazine last week at Microsoft's Spring showcase event.
"It’s not the time to be conservative; a few years ago we could be conservative when we had our nice comfortable safe controllers, our safe consoles that was it there was no more than that," Molyneux explained. "Well now we’re in a whole new era and that era is about exploring, creating and playing with ideas because our consumers – our gamers, our core gamers, our social gamers the entire world – are looking to this industry and are saying 'excite us'. Innovate."
Minecraft is just one inspiration for Molyneux's brave new world.
"Games like Minecraft show that if you just break those rules, those solid foundation stones that have become millstones round our neck then wonderful things happen," Molyneux explained.
"I love Marcus Persson because he broke the rules, he had a game without tutorials, he had a game where you can just walk off into the sunset for forever and ever and he had a game where every block can change and that shouldn’t work. I can remember talking to people in all sorts of organisations where they said that’s rubbish it’s never going to work. Where is his tutorial? [Laughs]. Now they’re laughing on the other side of their face." everything you know and love about Minecraft is here (short of the ability to mod the game as you can mod the PC version). It works well with the controller, and is just about exactly what you'd picture when you picture Minecraft running on an Xbox 360. However, there's one crucial new feature—four-player split-screen multiplayer.
(Note: The image at the top is actually a photoshop job.)
While the core single player will remain unchanged, I could easily see split-screen substantially changing the way that people play Minecraft. I love the meditative, compulsive single-player aspect of the game, but the multiplayer is where things start to get really interesting. It takes a very long time to build something in the game (without using cheats, that is), and the more people you have tackling a project, the more ambitious you can be.
I also haven't explored the multiplayer space that much—it can be hard to find the right server, and to coordinate with friends. So the idea of having three friends over and spending the afternoon goofing around and building things in Minecraft together, in the same room, sounds like a load of fun. PC players have been working on split-screen mods for some time, but this builds split-screen into the main game and makes it really easy to use. Even better, 1-4 players can team up with other players online with easy drop-in, drop-out, and up to eight players can play together.
I'd imagine local co-op to be a different kind of multiplayer than the hardcore, massive efforts of PC players who are building, say, cities from Game of Thrones together. But rather than even attempting to replace that outlet, this multiplayer will simply add to it, and appeal to a new demographic.
Carpenter told me that he plays this game every night with his son, which sounds like a fantastic way to spent time gaming with your family. Just as with Minecraft, the possibilities for split-screen gaming seem endless, just because it would be so much fun to be in the same room with people as you build things.
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