When Markus Persson set out to create Minecraft, console play wasn’t really on his mind. The wildly popular and as-yet-unreleased (technically speaking; the beta has been selling for some time now) PC game started life on the Java platform, and would have lived there always had it not been for the widespread embrace among gamers of its world-building ways. Android and iOS versions are already in development, as is an Xbox 360, which Persson talked a little bit about in a recent interview with IGN.
“I find myself in a strange situation here! There’s going to [be] actual marketing for the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft, so I’ve agreed to be slightly less transparent than usual when it comes to that version,” he joked. “So now I basically have no idea what I can and what I can’t say.”
Then he got a little more serious. “It will be designed to work better on a console and to focus on the types of experiences you expect when playing games on a game console,” he said. “As an example of something that will change, the crafting needs to be done completely different. The current type of crafting with a game controller would be about as fun as name-entry is.”
Persson also confirmed that he wants the 360 release to offer Kinect support, though he never mentions the Microsoft peripheral by name. “I’m trying very hard to make sure we have a setting you can turn on that turns the game into what everyone is joking about; you wave your arms around to mine and use items. It’s just too silly not to include. Punching trees from the comfort of your living room has never been this immersive before.”
If you haven’t played Minecraft before, just know that these quotes all come from its creator. Don’t you want to see what a game that springs from the mind of a man who promotes living room tree-punching looks like?
