Minecraft and Norse mythology may seem like two very different things, but the two are coming together with the new Norse Mythology Mash-Up Pack, a new DLC release that brings together some familiar pieces together with the blocky goodness of Minecraft.
The mash-up pack includes locations like Hel, the Great Hall, and Yggdrasil from throughout the annals of Norse mythology. You can even dress up as important figures from the stories themselves, like the very same ones you may remember reading about in one of your history classes (the parts you fell asleep during.)
For instance you can dress up as Thor and Odin, or even Heimdall and Sif. There are a few creatures up for grabs as well to complete the package. Enemies get several interesting skins as well, transforming familiar baddies into antagonists based in Norse mythology.
There are plenty of large, fanciful environments found in the expansion as well that really look as though they could transport you, even temporarily, to a faraway place and time. You can see it all in action in the official trailer, and you can download the DLC pack right now across all Minecraft platforms.
If you like reskinning Minecraft with lots of different looks, be on the lookout for a new Festive Mash-Up DLC pack, which is releasing later this week just in time for the holidays. It will transform your favorite world with candy canes, Santa hats, reindeer, and more!
A small family business in the West of Ireland has been selected by global gaming giants Microsoft and Mojang as an official events partner for Minecraft community events.
O’Brien Event Management was established by mum-of-three Lisa O’Brien, who was inspired to run conventions for fans of Minecraft after witnessing her own children’s obsession with the game.
Her company is now one of only three companies worldwide to be certified as an official Minecraft community events partner.
Speaking to the Galway Advertiser, Ms. O’Brien said “being selected by Microsoft and Mojang as an official events partner for Minecraft community events is a huge honour. We are the only partner company in Ireland.
“Having this status will allow us display official Minecraft graphics at our future events, offering fans an even better and more immersive experience. It will also enable us to strengthen our relationships with the global Minecraft community, including those who produce the maps used by Minecraft players when they bring in Microsoft educations to explain the powers of Minecraft to event attendees.
“Becoming an official partner will help hugely in continuing to grow our event, attracting world-class participants and sponsors, and ensuring we’re the No. 1 event for Minecraft fans in Ireland and beyond.”
Ms O’Brien ran her first “MineVention” event in Galway in December 2014. The 1,500 tickets for the event sold out in just nine hours and, since then, she has run an additional 20 MineVention events and workshops in 10 locations nationwide. Over 35,000 people have attended her events.
Tickets for Ireland’s next MineVention event are on sale now. The event will take place in Dublin’s RDS on 14th and 15th April. Tickets start from €15 and are available through Ticketmaster.
“When we started out in 2014, we had no idea of the demand that was out there from Minecraft fans. Parents had their children literally begging them to get tickets to our events.
“The support we’ve received from the Minecraft community and attendees has been overwhelming. We attribute our success to being responsive and keeping it real: we’re a small company and we personally deal with all aspects of the event – from programming, marketing and ticketing to email enquiries and social media.
“We take all feedback on board, and we implement changes and improvements all the time in response to what we’re hearing from Minecraft fans. We’ve also built up excellent relationships with Minecraft content creators: we’ve had some of the most high-profile people in the global Minecraft community attending and participating in our events.”
Minecraft is one of the most popular computer games ever developed, selling over 122 million copies since it launched in 2009.
Its popularity is so great that a community of professional YouTubers has emerged – gamers who make a living from posting videos of themselves online playing Minecraft.
The attendance of these professional gamers at the various events over the years has been one of the most popular elements of MineVention, says Lisa O’Brien.
“The ‘meet and greets’ with YouTubers have been hugely successful,” she says. “However, there’s a lot more than that to our events. We also have Minecraft VR, Education in Minecraft, gaming tournaments, ‘Build Battle’ stages, games, and arts and crafts.
“We’ve partnered with Autism Action to make sure our events are accessible and welcoming for children with autism and, in 2018, we’re introducing lots of new elements, including the chance to play on new maps built by Mojang’s MarketPlace and to visit our streaming zone to see how it all works. The fact that we’re now an official Minecraft partner means our 2018 event will be the best yet.”
O’Brien Event Management is based in Portumna, Co. Galway, and employs four people alongside Ms. O’Brien, with plans to recruit a further three staff-members in the coming year.
Further information about MineVention 2018 is available at www.minevention.com
Square Enix can claim a few of the year’s biggest success stories with games like Nier: Automata, Final Fantasy XV, and the continued success of Final Fantasy XIV. And while Square Enix has floated games as services as the future of the industry, bolstered by a successful series of mobile games, it appears the recent controversies around microtransactions have made an impact on the company.
In a recent interview with Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda for MCV, the Square Enix head shared some thoughts about microtransactions in the current game climate and how the practice might not suit console games.
“What people expect and want in a home console game is perhaps quite different from what people want in a mobile game,” said Matsuda. “The way that console games are made, the volume of content and how much effort goes into them, there’s something in that which doesn’t fit in the mind with microtransactions.”
Final Fantasy XV has released a steady stream of DLC.1
The statement is rather interesting because earlier this year, Matsuda said that the focus in the industry is shifting towards games as services, a style of game where players would be continuously tied to a single game thanks to regular content releases. There appears to be an acknowledgement that microtransactions in full content, $60 games are incompatible.
However in the age of season passes, story expansions, and other forms of DLC, it’s hard to take this as an outright indictment of microtransactions from the Square Enix CEO. What’s clear is that Matsuda seems to argue that the tactics for microtransactions found in mobile games can’t, or won’t, work in console games. What that means in practice is still unclear.
EA kicked up a huge controversy regarding microtransactions with Star Wars Battlefront 2 this holiday season. The game offered players who wanted an “accelerated” experience an option to purchase game-improving upgrades. This generated anger among players who felt it to be unfair for players who have to otherwise play hours and hours of game content to receive the benefits of players who can buy their way to the top.
Now the industry is reeling from the controversy, with lawmakers calling for investigations into loot practices and EA considering abandoning loot boxes altogether.
Square Enix for its part found major success with the single-player Nier: Automata. There’s a good chance that its success and the toxicity around microtransactions could convince Square Enix to stay clear from practices that could potentially anger players like loot boxes.
The Xbox One version of PUBG hasn’t had the smoothest of releases, with the game’s performance and visuals coming under fire from players. Thankfully, PUBG on Xbox One is set to be improved today thanks to the game’s first patch.
PUBG on Xbox One currently suffers from some pretty severe frame rate issues and isn’t much of a looker (on either Xbox One or Xbox One X), but the first steps to improve things start today. As well as a series of bug fixes, gameplay, and UI tweaks, the debut patch for PUBG on Xbox One will provide a first pass on visual and performance improvements.
That’s great news for players of PUBG on Xbox One X. While the game is part of the Xbox Game Preview program and as such is a work in progress, such a high profile game performing so badly on the consoles isn’t a good look for Microsoft. As the firm battles to gain some ground on the PlayStation 4, it’s hoping the power of the Xbox One X will win over some players.
The Xbox One PUBG patch will go live today at 1AM PST / 10AM CET / 6PM KST. Detailed patch are below:
Gameplay
Gas can now be used while on bike or bike with sidecar
UI/UX
Equipment icons on HUD will now be visible
Player icon is now more clearly visible on the world map
UI prompts now appear when reload and enter a vehicle options are present
Character
Tweaked hair color options
Animation
Cleaned up sidecar passenger animations in first person view
Fixed player camera issues while a passenger on the backseat of a Buggy
Addressed arm animations specific to holding some weapons
Character now correctly faces the proper direction when stopping while swimming
Others
First pass visual and performance improvements
Slightly improved anti-aliasing on Xbox One and Xbox One S
Localization updates for Vietnamese, Spanish,(Spain/Mexico)
Controls on motorcycle no longer inverted
Keyboard functionality is disabled
Bug Fixes
Fixed instances of player nametags not properly displaying in the lobby during Squad and Duo play
Fixed minor animation while crouching and prone
Fixed issues where curtains on windows block line of sight of players in the TPP mode
Fixed an issue where when Squad leader left the party, voice chat ceased to function as intended
Fixed issue where players could lean out of vehicles even when obstructed
Fixed collision of cardboard boxes in Yasnaya city
Fixed typo in the controller guide
Other minor fixes
Read all about how to get better at PUBG on Xbox One in our PUBG Xbox One guides.
Back in September, Microsoft and Mojang launched the Better Together update for Minecraft on Windows 10, Xbox One, iOS, and Android. This update allowed players on those devices to play together and access the Marketplace on any of those platforms.
The new Better Together versions of Minecraft are known collectively as the Bedrock Edition. The Bedrock games avoid the “___ Edition” naming scheme on their respective platforms, being just “Minecraft” instead of “Minecraft: Pocket Edition” or “Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition”. This is the new foundation and codebase Mojang wants to build upon, hence the name.
In the case of Minecraft on Xbox One, if you purchase the game now on the Xbox Store, it’s the Bedrock Edition, called “Minecraft”. If you had the previous Minecraft: Xbox One Edition, you get the new version for free, but the old one remains installed on your console. This allows players to switch back and forth between both versions and players are finding they prefer the old Xbox One Edition.
If you go to the Microsoft Store page for Minecraft: Xbox One Edition, the game is rated at 4.5 stars out of 5 with 111,000 reviews. In contrast, the new Minecraft entry is rated at 2.5 stars out of 5, with 5,634 reviews as of this writing.
“The Xbox One Edition was designed for Xbox, this version is literally a port from PC. The creative inventory is a disarray and difficult to navigate, placing blocks is much slower as being precise is terribly difficult. The graphics are a disgrace, the game crashes every 30 mins, everything is laggy,” said one review. (Edited for spelling and formatting.)
“The new crafting and inventory menus are quite cumbersome and seem rushed. It now takes easily twice as long to perform trivial tasks like swapping items in these menus in creative mode. The previous setup was much more streamlined and easier to use,” added another review.
“I played this version in beta and it was not ready for a public release. There are numerous problems that went unaddressed or were flat out ignored. To list a few: Frame rate is extremely unstable and drops considerable. This version is not optimized for redstone and more complicated devices produce massive amounts of lag,” said one review from last month.
The previous Minecraft editions were customized for their specific platforms by 4J Studios, who no longer seem to be involved in the new versions. They took into account the technology behind each console or device, and tailored the releases to those platforms.
Players are saying that the Bedrock Edition represents a step back. There are lost features like large biomes, some players dislike the new UI and Creative mode controls, there are reported frame rate issues, lag, and crashes that didn’t occur in previous editions, and some players can’t even convert their worlds over to the new version. One of the top requests on the Minecraft support site is for a console UI for the Bedrock Editions on Xbox One.
Players on Xbox One have gone around the problem by simply playing the old Xbox One Edition, but Mojang isn’t updating that version anymore. If players want new features, they’ll need to upgrade eventually. Currently, the Nintendo Switch version is supposed to join the Better Together party at a later date, but some Switch players are hoping that update can be pushed down the line until the Bedrock codebase has seen some fixes. Hopefully, Mojang and Microsoft keep plugging away at the new unified Minecraft, because players aren’t happy.
