The video above centers around the Xbox 360 edition of Minecraft. It was revealed over the weekend during the first official Minecraft convention, Minecon.
The trailer is extremely goofy, we'll grant you that, but you have to love the not-too-obvious digs at the Kinect and motion control commercials the Mojang crew decided to make. Riding a mine cart while acting like you're on a delayed roller coaster? Yup, that happened.
Not too much has been discussed regarding the feature list of the upcoming Xbox LIVE Arcade version of Minecraft. However, so far we know that 4J Studios is behind the porting of the project, not Mojang or Markus "Notch" Persson. Otherwise, other features have been mere unconfirmed rumblings; things like PC platform cross-play among them.
The video above does show off one feature I'm already on the fence about: the tutorial. Part of the joy of firing up Minecraft for the first time was not knowing what to do. You were dropped into an environment with no tools, no notes, no signs, nothing. Then night fell and you found yourself completely trapped and absolutely terrified. If the tutorial teaches you things like basic crafting recipes for surviving your first night, those that take it should feel like wimps.
Back in my day, we didn't have in-game tutori–I'll stop the old curmogeon speak right there. Maybe the console folk will like being shown what to do in order to "win" at Minecraft; however, I'll say this, if you want to be challenged and you've never tried this game before, do not play the tutorial. Half the fun of this game is figuring things out on your own while trying to gather and survive.
Minecraft is slated to release on the Xbox 360 during the spring of 2012. There are currently no plans to port the game to the PlayStation 3. We'll have more on the title as it comes.
