Forward-looking: Minecraft Earth could be exactly what the mobile gaming industry needs to further advance the idea of augmented reality gaming. Pokémon Go was a revolutionary step forward for AR gaming and although millions are still playing today, its impact somehow felt limited. Minecraft already has a massive user base, many of which will no doubt be excited to give the mobile AR variant a whirl.

Microsoft as part of its 10th anniversary celebration for Minecraft on Friday officially unveiledMinecraft Earth, a new augmented reality mobile game.

With Minecraft Earth, you’ll be able to create, explore, collect, collaborate and survive like never before. Collaboration is arguably the biggest draw of Minecraft Earth as you’re encouraged to share your creations with others in the real world.

Microsoft’s new game is not a direct translation of Minecraft but rather, an adaptation. It’s built on the familiar Bedrock engine so, as Minecraft Earth game director Torfi Olafsson explained to The Verge, “if you like building Redstone machines, or you’re used to how the water flows, or how sand falls down, it all works.”

Microsoft purchased Minecraft creator Mojang in late 2014 for a staggering $2.5 billion. The acquisition seemed puzzling at the time but Microsoft has made the most of its investment in the years since.

Minecraft Earth launches in beta on Android and iOS this summer.

Minecraft is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. It revolutionized video games when its first version released in 2009, encouraging developers everywhere to rethink how they approached their own well-established franchises. People who didn’t normally play games were persuaded to try out the title after learning about its educational benefits. Of course, many picked up Minecraft simply to spend more time with friends. Here are a few reasons why Mojang’s masterpiece continues to be worthwhile for fans both new and old.

Minecraft in 2019 | Great updates

While updates from 2014 to 2017 weren’t met with positive reception from the game’s community, last year’s “Update Aquatic” (1.13) and last month’s “Village and Pillage” (1.14) introduced a hefty amount of new content for fans to enjoy. The first transformed Minecraft‘s previously lifeless oceans into vastly different environments.

Frozen, cold, normal, lukewarm, and warm waters could be explored alongside regular and deep oceans. Each has its own distinct fauna and flora to discover alongside elaborate shipwrecks and dilapidated ruins. It’s fascinating to see kelp and sea grass gently sway in the trenches as a school of tropical fish swim by, especially if one has grown used to the unsophisticated oceans of the past.

“Update Aquatic” didn’t stop there. A new type of creature called the phantom now spawns in the overworld if players neglect to sleep for three days. Phantoms will increase their numbers the more that fans put off sleep, swooping down at them from the sky above until they decide to get some much-needed rest. Chest restrictions have also been removed, allowing players to place regular chests side by side without having to use trapped chests.

April’s “Village and Pillage” update was just as impressive as “Update Aquatic,” if not more. It introduced a new type of ill-willing villager called the pillager, the likes of which is armed with a crossbow and can pursue players from 100 blocks away. A new beast called the ravager helps pillagers destroy everything in their wake, from homes and crops to innocent NPCs. Speaking of creatures, foxes, llamas, and pandas now roam around the world, scurrying across forests or climbing up bamboo.

Villages now vary depending on their biome, meaning desert structures have different infrastructure than tundra structures. The fast and fluid crossbow can be commandeered from a pillager so that fans can take down targets from afar. Crafting has also been overhauled, allowing players better access to frequently used items by requiring less rare materials. A bunch of useful new objects can be built too, including blast furnaces, smokers, cartography tables, and more. That’s not to mention that combat will be improved at a later date, after Mojang receives feedback. It all goes to show that the studio is listening and still changing the game even all these years later.

 Minecraft in 2019 | Millions still play it

One may be quick to assume Fortnite is the most watched game on YouTube, considering how frequently it appears on the platform’s trending section. According to YouTube’s director of gaming content and partnerships, however, that wasn’t the case last year, even with the battle royale genre’s huge surge in popularity. Rather, Minecraft remained the site’s most discussed title globally.

This makes sense considering how Microsoft had announced the game had 91 million monthly players this past March. For comparison, Epic Games stated that Fortnite garnered 78 million monthly players last September. The fact that Minecraft hit 74 million users in late 2017 indicates that the game is growing steadily despite its competition. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the game manages to hit over 100 million monthly players by the end of 2019, especially if Mojang promises new updates similar to its last two. It crossed 176 million copies sold this past weekend, so it may have reached that threshold already.

Minecraft in 2019 | It’s still unlike anything else on the market

Few games out there successfully emulate Minecraft‘s addictive and immersive qualities. Fortnite has building mechanics, but is much more focused on competitive play. Indie games like Eco allow players to build sustainable civilizations with one another, but lack the same emphasis on crafting whatever it is one desires. Major franchises like Fallout or Dragon Quest have either designed ancillary modes or spin-off titles clearly inspired by Minecraft, but each has failed to win over a huge portion of the sandbox community.

Many of today’s best AAA titles boast vast open worlds to explore, but few allow users to completely alter the terrain. These games merely make players the guests in their worlds. Minecraft, on the other hand, makes players feel like they’re a world’s overseer. Though this sensation is endemic to the sandbox genre, there aren’t many titles in this category that allow as much freedom. It’s easy to go back to Minecraft just to discover what lies inside a dark deep sea trench or what would happen if one ignited heaps of TNT around the base of a mountain. The game’s worlds beg players to keep digging until they find whatever they’re looking for.

If the above reasons weren’t compelling enough, a free-to-play AR mobile spin-off called MINECRAFT EARTH is set to launch its beta this summer. It promises to allow players the ability to recreate some of their greatest structures in the real world, wherever they may be. Whether this secures Mojang’s world domination remains to be seen, though it’s likely that the title will motivate people to log onto servers they haven’t visited in a while. There’s always reason to reintroduce yourself to an old video game, no matter how long it’s been since you last enjoyed it. Lapsed players may find that today’s Minecraft feels like a whole new adventure worth taking.

For many adults, it is hard to understand why kids love to play Minecraft. Instead of pushing CGI boundaries, the game has a retro look — and gameplay that appears to make very little sense. 

That did not stop Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) from spending $2.5 billion to buy Mojang, the developer of the popular game. Since that purchase just over a year ago, not much has changed for Minecraft. The game remains popular but it’s no longer a white-hot title, having lost some of its mojo to Fortnite.

Still, Minecraft remains a huge brand — especially with younger kids — and Microsoft wants to expand its reach. The company recently showed off Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality (AR) game, to select reporters at its Build developers conference.

MINECRAFT EARTH IS AN AUGMENTED REALITY GAME. IMAGE SOURCE: MICROSOFT.

What’s augmented reality?

AR is reality with a twist. Technology superimposes computer-generated images over what you see in the real world. The best example — and the one Minecraft Earth won’t be able to avoid comparisons to — is Pokemon Go.

That game, which briefly became a phenomenon, layers Pokemon characters into real settings, and players can “catch” those computer-generated characters. As you play, the character Pikachu might pop up in the cafe where you’re having coffee or a Charmander might be running amok at your grocery store.

It’s a clever, engaging game (some would argue too engaging, as some people got hurt by engaging with the game and not paying attention to the real world) that showed people the possibilities of AR. Microsoft wants to build on that but seemed a little dismissive of the competition, in comments reported by Geekwire.

“It’s not just a geocaching game with, like, 2% of it in augmented reality,” said Minecraft Game Director Torfi Olafsson. “We decided to go headfirst and build the game from the ground up as an experience that you play both in your immediate environment — when you’re home — and out in the world, like in parks, in cities.”

Minecraft Earth aims to deliver a more social experience than Pokemon Go. To complete some “quests,” players must be in the same room in real life. The game, it’s important to note, isn’t a new version of Minecraft. It’s the core game in a new setting, which should make the learning curve minimal for new players.

“This is a social experience from the ground up,” Olafsson said. The game will roll out in tests this summer.

What does this mean for Microsoft?

This takes an already popular game and brings it to a new platform. That gives it the potential to be a hit, and it’s a sort of backdoor way for Microsoft to get more people to experience AR, an area where the company has invested heavily.

We’re still in the early days of AR — the fun, experimental phase. If games like this catch on, however, it’s easy to see business and education uses for the technology — beyond learning the names of various Pokemon.

So far, AR and virtual reality have mostly been novelties. A game can be the sort of “killer app” that takes a trend with potential and makes it mainstream. Minecraft Earth could be the product that helps do that. Or it could just be another way to keep people hooked on Minecraft.

THE GAMING WORLD may seem like it’s ruled by Fortnite, but Minecraft continues to be a phenomenon. In the 10 years since the very first Java edition went public, it’s sold 176 million copies. More than 90 million people play it every month, and that number has gone up every year, boosted most recently by 200 million Chinese users. Between PCs, game consoles, mobile, and VR devices, you can buy it for 20 different platforms. Videos of people playing the open-ended sandbox game still get tens of billions of views every year on YouTube.

Of course, it’s also a decade old. While Microsoft has made significant updates nearly every year since acquiring the game from original developer Mojang in 2012, there’s never been a new Minecraft. (There was episodic point-and-click title Minecraft: Story Mode, sure, and dungeon-crawling adventure game Minecraft: Dungeons is coming to PC later this year, but neither of those delivers the core building experience that defines the game.) So how do you do something new that the whole world can play? You put it out in the world.

Minecraft Earth, which Microsoft announces today, is an augmented-reality-driven mobile game that blockifies the planet. When it comes out later this summer, iOS and Android users will be able to construct a “build,” as the block-based environments are known, anywhere they want—on a tabletop, on their couch, on the floor—and even invite their friends to help. When they’re done, they can make that build life-size and walk around inside it. Out in the world, in parks and at other landmarks, players can take part in short adventures by themselves or with anyone else in the area, then use the spoils to level up their character and make their build even more impressive. It’s a massive undertaking that quite literally covers the entire globe in Minecraft—and is the biggest step yet taken toward the two-ply world of shared, persistent augmented reality.

As soon as Saxs Persson joined the Minecraft team in 2015, he started thinking about AR possibilities. At the time, Microsoft’s HoloLens headset was in development, and Persson and some of his colleagues helped create a demonstration in which he plopped a Minecraft village onto a table, poking his head inside houses and even looking underground.

What the demo didn’t show was that the team also had a similar experience scaled up to life-size. Back in the Minecraft offices in Redmond, Washington, where they shared a building with Halo studio 343 Industries, the team would put people in the HoloLens and then send AR sheep walking down the hallway toward them—“slowly, certainly not threateningly,” Persson says now, sitting in a conference room right next to that hallway. Invariably, every single person was so immersed that they would move out of the way to let the blocky Minecraft sheep pass.

Something clicked for Persson (who bears no relation to Minecraft creator and Mojang co-founder Markus “Notch” Persson). The HoloLens obviously wasn’t a perfect device—it was an enterprise device, it was expensive, and its pinchy-wavey gestural controls didn’t really map well to Minecraft—but it accomplished something magical. It made Minecraftcome to life. Still, technical obstacles abounded, so the team put the idea aside until July 2017, when a discussion with the United Nations about using Minecraft to help people visualize community development made Persson realize that smartphones might be ready to deliver a true AR experience. He began discussing the idea with Mojang chief creative officer Jens Bergensten, even flying to Stockholm the next month and dragging him around the city for hours while they waved their phones and brainstormed.

They knew what they wanted; they just didn’t know how to make it happen. In order for multiple people to be able to see the same thing in the same place—say, a Minecraft pig standing in front of a fountain—you need to be able to permanently establish the pig’s location in the real world, what’s called an anchor. At the time, there simply wasn’t a way to create a permanent anchor that could then be triggered by anyone visiting that particular spot. “Name a Fortune 500 tech company,” Persson says. “I probably asked them, ‘Hey, are you working on this?’” Nobody was.

Until they were. Just before Christmas 2017, Minecraftdirector of engineering Michael Weilbacher went to Persson about a rumor he’d heard. Apparently, some researchers working with Alex Kipman—the person who had headed up the HoloLens development and who oversees some of the company’s leading-edge work in AI—were setting out to solve exactly the problem Persson had. In January 2018, Persson and Kipman made a handshake deal: Each of them would form a team to tackle the issue, and they’d see what they could do.

Persson, by now creative director of Minecraft, took a handful of folks to a separate office in a different building. “Very undisclosed,” says game director Torfi Olafsson, who joined the project in February after 18 years at EVE Online. “Windowless room, no markings, double layer of security.” They called it The Dungeon. For the first six or eight months of 2018, no one outside the two teams knew about the existence of The Dungeon, let alone what its purpose was. The purpose, of course, is now known as Minecraft Earth.

Smartphones have come a long way since 2015—both in price (boo) and in their ability to deliver a compelling AR experience (yay). By now, Android and iOS offer robust AR development tools, and ever-improving sensors and computer vision algorithms deliver a higher frame rate without draining your battery quite so enthusiastically. Minecraft Earth wrings every last bit out of all those things. I was able to try out a few different aspects of the game, which is still in its pre-beta stages, and each delivered AR experiences I have yet to see outside of a dedicated headset like HoloLens or Magic Leap.

In the game’s Create mode, I collaborated with Olafsson and others on a test build. After Olafsson placed the build on a table, I could walk around the table to examine it from any angle, adding materials from my own inventory or even re-mining what had already been added to the construction. Multiplayer building is only possible if your friends are in your real-world location, and you’ll have to give them permission to access your build.

Once you’re done building, you can scale your build up to life-size, put it anywhere you want, and invite people to enjoy it in Play mode. Elsewhere in the studio offices, I maneuvered through a multilevel build, opening doors and setting off traps while blocky villagers rolled by on mine carts, even launching fireworks that had been left there for me—all through my phone while I crouched and spun my way through the room. It all looked exactly like Minecraft, and it all behaved exactly like Minecraft. “Everything you know about Minecraft applies here,” says Jesse Merriam, the game’s executive producer. “With redstone and pistons, you can make anything your heart desires.” While changes made in Create mode are permanent, those in Play mode aren’t; it’s one of a few ways the team is hoping to head off griefing or willful sabotage, which isn’t exactly a rare thingin regular Minecraft. (Of course, that means friends you’ve invited to Create mode can sneak into your build. “It’s like vampires,” Olafsson says. “If you invited me in, it’s kind of on you.”)

The other primary gameplay component is shared far more widely. Pull up Minecraft Earth on your phone, as I did walking around downtown Redmond with some of the developers, and you’ll see a map of your surroundings, rendered in friendly abstractions and dotted with various tappable icons. Anything you tap, from common materials to rare precious gems, gets added to your inventory—and you’re gonna need it. You don’t start Minecraft Earth with a bag full of resources; you collect them yourself.

If you see multiple icons in a location, that signals an “adventure,” a six- to eight-minute vignette you can play, along with whoever else happens to be there with you. These spawn dynamically and are procedurally generated, so you’ll likely never do the same adventure twice. (They also reset, so if you don’t feel like playing with anyone, wait ’em out until you can do it yourself.) Some are dungeons, some are peaceful. Maybe you need to shoot some skeletons with a bow and arrow to find some treasure, maybe you need to collaborate to build something. When you’re doing it months before the game comes out, though, you need to be subtle. “We like to pretend we’re playing Pokémon Go,” says Jessica Zahn, principal program manager on the game.

Which brings us to the 800-pound Pikachu in the room. The obvious comparison here is Niantic’s Pokémon Go, as well as the forthcoming game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Both turn the real world into a treasure map for you to explore, and both are able to bring virtual creatures into your non-virtual surroundings. However, the AR functionality in both is optional. If you turn it off, you’ve essentially got two location-based collecting games. Minecraft Earth makes AR its very essence, and not just AR—shared, persistent AR. In other words, it might just be the first wide-scale mass experience with one foot planted squarely in the Mirrorworld.

“We started with the basic idea of Minecraft in real life,” Persson says. “We don’t want a flavor of it. We don’t want some of it. We don’t want a compromise. We want everything you’ve ever learned in Minecraft to be in real life. There’s no other way. There’s no desktop mode. It’s about people being together. Whenever we limit it, make it smaller, the whole team pushes against it.”

Moreover, Minecraft Earth doesn’t use GPS. Instead, it uses something called Azure Spatial Anchors, which leverage Open Street Map and Microsoft’s massive Azure cloud system to generate hundreds of millions of locations around the planet where players can interact with the game. (Seattle alone has more than 100,000.) Not only are these “feature points” more precise than GPS, which has a sizable error radius, but they’re able to include data like altitude, which enables the game to distinguish between a location at sidewalk level and something that might be on an upper floor of a building. Over time, as more people visit feature points, their specific anonymized locations—and the angles from which they view the feature points—help refine the data even further.

This is all still a work in progress, of course. A closed beta will launch this summer, with the full game coming later this year. I saw nothing concrete about how your character might level up, though Olafsson says that specialization will be part of it, and while the game is free to play, the team isn’t talking about exactly how they’ll monetize it—other than to vow there will be absolutely no loot boxes. Even if the topic had come up at some point, this is Minecraft, so there was only one thing to do with the idea: Block it.

Is Xbox Live required for Minecraft Earth?

Minecraft Earth is Microsoft’s next major foray into augmented reality, capitalizing on Pokemon Go’s success as a host of virtual adventures. Exploring a voxel sandbox fused with real-world locations, it’s an all-new mobile spin on the multi-billion-dollar franchise. The game heads to iOS and Android in 2019, with an early access beta set for the summer.

With Minecraft Earth positioned under the Xbox gaming family, Xbox Live sits at the heart of this connected world. Xbox Live is Microsoft’s online gaming service, unlocking the full potential from Xbox One, Windows 10, and Xbox mobile apps. For Minecraft Earth, it provides the backbone for online play and other connected features.

Despite limited details on Minecraft Earth, it appears an Xbox Live account will be mandatory. Creating an account is free and easy, or existing Xbox owners can use current credentials. While existing Xbox One users will be familiar with paid Xbox Live Gold subscriptions, Minecraft Earth will only require a free Xbox Live account.

Why does Minecraft Earth need Xbox Live?

As an always-connected experience, Xbox Live will help power Minecraft Earth. Your Xbox Live account defines your unique username and profile, alongside saving personal progress as you play. Existing Minecraft players can also transfer achievements and skins by using the same Xbox Live credentials.

Minecraft Earth will also leverage Xbox Live’s existing suite of privacy and safety tools for kids. Parents can customize and monitor the online experience to keep the little ones safe.

With Minecraft Earth yet to release, Microsoft is accepting early beta applications ahead of the summer kick-off. An Xbox Live account is also required for the beta sign-up, like the final game.

Get started today

While Minecraft Earth remains in the pipeline, the vanilla variant of Minecraft is available today. Many core mechanics and philosophies will translate to Minecraft Earth, making for a fitting way prepare for launch. It spans PC, all major consoles, and mobile devices, with cross-platform multiplayer, purchases, and saves.

In context: If you’ve played an online multiplayer game in your lifetime — particularly a competitive multiplayer game — you’ve probably heard plenty of insults. Whether they’re racial slurs, “homophobic” comments, or generic “your momma”-style insults, playful and not-so-playful jabs are the bread and butter of the competitive gaming industry.

For better or worse, though, this “culture” of “toxicity,” despite being relatively common in the past, has come under much more intense scrutiny in recent years. Now, that scrutiny is coming from none other than the Xbox chief himself: Phil Spencer.

In a new blog post published today (dubbed “Video games: A unifying force for the world”), Spencer discusses two “fundamental truths” about gaming. First, he says, no one group “owns” the industry or the hobby; it’s home to a wide variety of people with a wide variety of tastes. “…whether you’re new to gaming or are a diehard e-sports fan, you are welcome to play and welcome to all the fun and skill-building that comes with gaming,” he states. “In this way, when everyone can play, the entire world wins.”

“…whether you’re new to gaming or are a diehard e-sports fan, you are welcome to play and welcome to all the fun and skill-building that comes with gaming,”

Spencer’s second fundamental truth is that gaming “must promote and protect the safety of all,” regardless of their political beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” He claims that as gaming has grown in popularity, it’s started to become a “toxic stew of hate speech, bigotry, and misogyny.”

Moving forward, Spencer says Microsoft as a whole commits to being “vigilant, proactive, and swift” to ensure gamers of all stripes can have fun without being targeted with “hate and harassment.”

Furthermore, the company will work “across the industry” to create comprehensive, modernized safety measures to expand upon existing Community Standards throughout the gaming sphere — whatever that might mean.

Why it matters: Microsoft revealed during its recent 10-year anniversary celebration for Minecraft that the sandbox has now sold more than 176 million copies to date “in virtually every country in the world.” If indeed accurate, that would make Minecraft one of the best-selling video games of all time.

Wikipedia has Minecraft in pole position with Tetris in the number two spot with sales of 170 million. As PC Gamer highlights, however, it’s impossible to know Tetris’ true standing in the ranks due to which versions of the game are considered actual descendants and who is doing the counting.

Wikipedia’s entry for Tetris is reportedly only accurate as of January 2010. Surely millions of additional copies of the game have been moved in the more than nine years since.

Either way, it’s an incredibly impressive feat for Minecraft to even be in the top five. Only one other game – Grand Theft Auto V – has managed to break 100 million units sold. Wii Sports is fourth with 82.87 million units sold and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is fifth at 50 million.

Microsoft used the anniversary celebration to announce a new Minecraft-themed augmented reality game called Minecraft Earth. It enters beta this summer on Android and iOS and will further add to Minecraft’s impressive resume.

One of the best-selling games of all-time, Minecraft, continues to set new benchmarks almost 10 years after release.

Nearly 10 years after initially releasing to the public, Mojang’s Minecraft is still setting new sales milestones.

Just recently, Minecraft’s PC version specifically has now passed 30 million copies sold worldwide. The official Minecraft website keeps track of this data in a ticker at the bottom of the webpage stating how many copies of the title have been purchased. As of the past day, that ticker finally turned past 30 million.

Even though this surely isn’t much of a surprise to many at this point, it’s still insane when you put it in perspective compared to other gaming properties. Minecraft’s PC sales alone surpass some lifetime sales for entire franchises that have multiple sequels and other various installments.

To date, Minecraft as a whole across all platforms has sold over 100 million copies and is one of the best-selling games ever made. For a game with such humble and small beginnings, it’s a success story for Mojang that likely will never be matched again. Even a game like Fornite, which is probably the biggest video game since Minecraft took off, has the backing of Epic, which was already a rather large company to begin with. Whether you like Minecraft or not, you can’t deny its meteoric rise over the past decade.

As for what’s next with Minecraft, the game today arrived on Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft’s subscription service for the Xbox One. There’s also a movie currently in the works as well at Warner Bros.

If you somehow haven’t gotten in on the Minecraft craze for yourself yet, it’s available on pretty much every platform imaginable. Go download it and build yourself a cool house, or something.

External storage for the PS4 has been an option for a while now, and a much quicker solution than installing a larger hard drive or SSD inside the PS4. Most USB 3.0 drives will work, but today PS4$299.00 at Amazonowners got a new, official option courtesy of Seagate.

Seagate has been offering its Game Drive external hard drives aimed at console games for years now, with 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities already available for the PS4. But the new Game Drive launched today is different because it’s an officially licensed product. That means it will match the look of your PS4 right down to the PlayStation logo on the casing.

In return for $89.99, Seagate is offering a 2TB drive which holds approximately 50 games. That’s based on each game requiring 39GB of storage space, so you could get a lot more on there depending on the types of game you choose to play.

Setting up the drive is as easy as plugging it in via the supplied USB cable, which also doubles as a power cable for the unit. As long as your PS4 is running system software 4.50 or greater, setup will happen automatically and takes about three minutes to complete. Seagate claims this Game Drive is as fast as the internal drive, so there’s no disadvantage in that regard. If you regularly visit a friend’s house to play games, you can take the Game Drive with you. As long as you sign into your friend’s console using your account, the games stored on the drive will be accessible.

2TB external drives cost around $60-$65, so you are paying a premium price for this official version of the Game Drive. However, Seagate already has an unofficial version of the 2TB Game Drive available to purchase and that costs $79.99. It seems likely the official model will enjoy the same price drop once retailers get their hands on it.

As part of Minecraft‘s tenth birthday celebrations, Mojang have commissioned a virtual theme park celebrating the build ’em up. It’s available as a free map for all players. Exhibitions include a sculpture garden of monsters in a glasshouse, demonstrations of redstone-powered doohickeys, museums, galleries, Easter eggs… it seems real fancy. A season of festivities for a mere tenth anniversary might seem churlish but hell, Minecraft has earned this. It broke into the public consciousness in a way few game games do then was surpassed only by a game it inspired, Fortnite. Take a victory lap, Minecraft.

“We created a map that celebrates everything about Minecraft past and present,” mapmakers BlockWorks explain. “Filled with Easter eggs, secrets and community references, this map is a tribute to the creative, curious and adventurous community of Minecrafters worldwide.”

BlockWorks are a professional Minecraft builder team who’ve made maps to promote all sorts of things. Their impressive portfolio of commissioned builds includes recreating the Great Fire of London for the Museum of London (a museum way better than its name might lead you to assume), dioramas of water infrastructure for Severn Trent, and that Brutalismfest Pip looked at. Fancy stuff. This one looks extra fancy.

The ’10 Years of Minecraft’ map is available free for both the Bedrock (Windows 10 & consoles) edition of Minecraft and ye olde Java. It’s on the Marketplace for Bedrock and here for plain ol’ Java. It’s in the library for Java Realms too.

Minecraft certainly isn’t ‘done’ yet either. Mojang launched the big ol’ Village & Pillage updateonly last month, and a dungeon-crawling spin-off named Minecraft: Dungeons is expected later this year.

The 10th birthday celebrations are due to bring a pair of “big announcements” on Friday the 17th. Mojang have already slammed online a free browser-based version of an early alphatoo. Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson, who sold the game and Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, is not invited to the festivities cos the hateful things he says online are somewhat incompatible with Minecraft’s family-friendly image.

Looking to meet available and heavily-armed men in your area for hot action… and maybe more? Check out Counter-Strike:…

Ah, Portal jokes – only 11 years past their prime.

Clean energy growth has reversed after a twenty-year trend upwards.

“Clean energy growth failed to increase year-over-year for the first time in nearly 20 years, a landmark report revealed this week. The finding puts the possibility of achieving the planet’s climate change goals into jeopardy, as annual growth currently stands at just a fraction what is ultimately needed.”

The first son of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry has been revealed to the world.

“Today, the world got its first look at Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, son of Meghan Markle, actress, philanthropist, the Duchess of Sussex, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. The young lad is 7th in line for the throne, and while the Sussexes have decided to not give him any formal titles, once his grandfather becomes King of England, he’ll be formally a prince.”

Uber drivers have protested the company’s policies on the eve of Uber’s IPO.

“Just days ahead of Silicon Valley’s most hyped mega-IPO, a group of a several hundred Uber drivers gathered in front of the company’s San Francisco headquarters and took over the street in a protest demanding fair pay, benefits, and greater transparency from the rideshare giant.”

Minecraft Classic has launched to celebrate the company’s ten-year anniversary.

“Video games are regularly patched, tweaked, and modified to the point where the original experience is lost for better or worse. For Minecraft $26.95 at Amazon, that original experience is being resurrected to help celebrate the game’s 10th anniversary. Posting on the Minecraft website, Tom Stone, creative communications assistant at developer Mojang AB, announced the launch of Minecraft Classic. It’s the original game, which provided players with, “just 32 blocks to build with, all the original bugs, and an (inter)face only a mother could love.”

New York may be the first state to ban declawing cats.

“A veterinary procedure criticized for being inhumane could soon be outlawed altogether in one state. As NBC New York reports, a bill that would ban declawing cats has been approved by one committee in the New York State Assembly, but it still has a few more rounds of voting to go before it becomes law.”

Netflix’s The Last Summer is a pretty boring coming-of-age movie. 

“The final moments of senior year and that summer after high school graduation have been the subject of more than a few coming-of-age films: Can’t Hardly Wait, Dazed and Confused, Say Anything, etc. It’s a time for goodbyes to old friends, last ditch hometown flings, and the crumbling security of adolescence as decisions about the future creep closer, forcing teens of a certain age into finding themselves… or whatever. Netflix’s latest entry into the post-high school, rom-com genre, aptly titled The Last Summer, follows a group of recent grads throughout, you guessed it, the last summer before college in an anthology focusing on the individual experiences of several Chicago teens. Mostly, it’s pretty boring!”

If you’re getting tired of being confined to the world of Minecraft, Microsoft and Mojang have some good news for you. This summer, Minecraft is entering the real-world thanks to augmented reality, mobile devices, and the Minecraft Earth app.

As the FAQ explains, Minecraft Earth is Minecraft, but as it appears in the real-world thanks to the use of augmented reality. Think Pokemon Go, but on a much larger scale and the with ability to “build creations with friends and place them in the real world at life-size.” Essentially, we’re being offered the Minecraft version of your location, be that at home, school, or wherever you choose to frequent.

Minecraft Earth will be made available for iOS and Android because those platforms make the most sense for augmented reality. To begin with, a closed beta will run on both platforms and starts in the summer. Hundreds of thousands of people will be allowed to play, but you must be at least 18 to participate. Simply sign up and cross your fingers if you want to take part.

Microsoft is giving no hint as to how long the closed beta will last, but it has confirmed Minecraft Earth will be free to play and also free of loot boxes. So expect the same Minecraft experience you enjoy today, but with a real-world, augmented reality twist.

Clearly, Minecraft Earth is the next big phase of the world’s expansion. However, last week the original Minecraft was made available to play in web browsers. You can therefore play Minecraft Classic while waiting for Earth to launch.

Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo have released a punchy Dead or Alive 6 launch trailer to celebrate its release today on PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One.

Dead or Alive 6 is supposed to tone down the series’ emphasis on fan service when it comes the design of its female combatants, although it doesn’t seem like much has changed in this respect. The fighters do sweat an awful lot in the game, though, which is new, right?

Team Ninja’s latest brawler also features a story mode, and there’s a robust lineup of characters to pick from, including fan favourites and newcomers alike. Oh, and there’s a stage in the game that features an actual Kraken, for some reason.

Dead or Alive 6 is out now.

Cats? Pandas? Notch? Minecraft is a very different game now to the one which launched back in 2009. It’s a more complex, customisable beast – and sometimes I yearn for the simplicity of its earlier days.

Well, today you can tickle your nostalgia buds and fire up Minecraft as it used to be, via your browser. Just head to classic.minecraft.net and you can play straightaway.

It’s basic. Very basic. But if you want to place some blocks and remember all the good times before Notch went weird, this is for you. This is Minecraft as it once was, just a handful of resources and the most basic of biomes to tinker with. Smells like memories.

We’re expecting many more Minecraft announcements next week, when the game hits its 10th anniversary proper. Yesterday, Microsoft teased a new mobile Minecraft AR game, which looks similar to Pokémon Go.

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You know how sometimes a new iPhone model will leak because an Apple employee leaves it in the back of a taxi?

Well, that’s the excitement Microsoft wants to conjur up in this new Minecraft teaser for what looks like a new Pokémon Go-style game.

Microsoft has dabbled in bringing Minecraft to other platforms before (remember that snazzy looking HoloLens tech demo?) but this one looks a little more familiar – it’s a mobile AR game you play on your phone while out on the street.

The video below shows a preened Microsoft employee leaving their mobile on a public bench. A woman picks it up and sees the new Minecraft AR game running, and is promptly excited by the pixelised pigs and Villagers around her.

More, we’re promised, will be unveiled at Minecraft’s big 10th anniversary event on 17th May.

Speaking of the event, Microsoft has confirmed Minecraft creator Notch will not be included in the celebration – due to his increasingly controversial “comments and opinions”.

Microsoft has announced that its annual MineCon livestream event, which offers a look at Minecraft’s future plans, will return (in this tenth anniversary year) on 28th September. Oh, and it’s got a new name.

Back in 2017, Microsoft decided to turn Minecraft’s massive real-life MineCon event, which had been held on a somewhat annual basis around the world since 2010, into a smaller-scale digital-only affair. The change in format heralded a new name – MineCon Earth – but that’s now been swept up by the newly announced Pokemon-Go-like Minecraft mobile game. As such, this year’s MineCon livestream will be known by the highly imaginative name of MineCon Live.

The show kicks off at 5pm on 28th September in the UK (that’s 12pm EST), and will last for around 90 minutes. It will feature, says Microsoft, “juicy Minecraft news, content creators… pre and post show bits, as well as on-demand community panels.”

Microsoft also promises new information on Minecraft’s next major game update, and the opportunity for fans to vote and decide on a new biome to be added to the game – similar to a competition held during MineCon Earth 2017, in which the community was able to vote on a new mob. That later gave the world the flying Phantom (the tongue-squid was robbed).

MineCon Live can be viewed on the official website come 28th September, and it’s also scheduled to appear on “a bunch of streaming sites”, says Microsoft somewhat unhelpfully. Presumably Mixer, Twitch, and YouTube then, but don’t quote me on that.

NetEase has tripled its net income year-over-year and has sights on international expansion. Niko Partners’ Daniel Ahmad says Minecraft’s achievement in China is ‘extremely impressive.’

China, even with its restrictive licensing policies, continues to be a huge market for the global games business, worth almost $31 billion in 2018 according to Niko Partners. Online game company NetEase is certainly one of the major contributors to the region’s growth, and the firm has just reported another very solid quarter with big gains in both revenues and net income to kick off its 2019 fiscal year.

“We are pleased to begin the year with a strong quarter. Our total net revenues grew robustly by 30% and our net income more than tripled year-over-year,” said Mr. William Ding, Chief Executive Officer and Director of NetEase. “Online game services revenues continued to grow steadily with the support of a diversified portfolio and impressive performances from all of our leading titles.”

Net revenues for the first quarter came to RMB (Chinese Yuan) 18,356.2 million ($2.7 billion) while NetEase saw its net income jump to RMB 2,382.1 million ($354.9 million). The publisher cited strong performances from titles like Night Falls: Survival, Onmyoji, and Invincible, along with steady performances from its Fantasy Westward Journey and New Westward Journey Onlineseries, which also saw new expansion packs released.

One particularly impressive achievement during the quarter came from Minecraft, which NetEase began publishing in China in August 2017. In less than a year, the game racked up 100 million registered users in China, and as NetEase reported, that number now stands at 200 million users, not even two years since it launched. For a game that’s well over a decade old, that’s quite a feat, and it shows just how globally appealing Minecraft truly is.

“Minecraft’s 200 million registered user number is extremely impressive given the game has been on the market for less than two years. Only a handful of games have been able to reach 200 million users in such a time frame. [Tencent’s] Honor of Kings reached this milestone shortly after one year on the market. We note that the game was popular in China prior to official entry, which helped pave the way for demand that has contributed to the success of the licensed Chinese version,” Niko Partners’ Senior Analyst, Daniel Ahmad, commented to GameDaily.

Minecraft was launched in China before the country’s restrictive game policies were put in place. That doesn’t mean that the popular block-based title is immune to the nation’s censorship, however.

“The Chinese version of Minecraft is quite similar to the Western version, as the game content was benign anyway, in that it is aimed at younger players. The main changes generally involve the interface and localization for Chinese players. However, NetEase was recently fined RMB 50,000 by China’s National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications after it was discovered that users were able to spread adult content in game through the rooms feature. The result was that NetEase deactivated the ability to rename rooms and implemented a stronger reporting policy to curb immoral content in the game,” Ahmad explained.

The fact that NetEase has been able to perform this well as the market continues to work through licensing pains actually makes the company’s first quarter even more impressive. Ahmad added that a number of other publishers “are still feeling the impact of the temporary game license approval freeze which ended in December 2018 [but NetEase] is diversifying its game development pipeline to create games in multiple genres and is working on global expansion through self developed titles and partnerships.”

NetEase CEO William Ding stressed that his company is making a concerted effort to expand beyond the MMORPG space and also into international markets. He specifically cited the “strong debuts’ of Night Falls: Survival and Cyber Hunter in Japan. Knives Out also has been popular in Japan, topping the iOS grossing chart in March and May, while Identity V reached Japan’s top 5 iOS grossing chart for the first time in April. Beyond that, NetEase is looking to launch Ancient Nocturne in Japan and Korea this year.

But will the Chinese giant’s ambitions lead it to take new steps in the West? The company opened a Western HQ back in 2015, but its business has been more about taking Western titles (such as those from Blizzard) and bringing them to China. That said, there’s more and more global thinking going into its product launches moving forward.

“NetEase has evolved significantly over the past couple of years and has shifted to a global game development approach for its new titles,” stressed Ahmad. “While previously focusing on developing games for China first, the company is now creating games with a global audience in mind with recent releases such as Cyber Hunter, a sci-fi Battle Royale game, showing that NetEase is able to develop and release games overseas prior to the China launch.

“We expect the company to grow its overseas revenue significantly over the next few years. In addition, as people look at Tencent and NetEase as the two gaming giants in China, NetEase has been able to stand out through its focus on high quality self-developed titles.”

Blockchain gaming giant Enjin is set to bring blockchain technology to the hugely popular sandbox video game Minecraft following the launch of its new Minecraft plugin.

Coin Rivet recently interviewed co-founder and CTO of Enjin Witek Radomski. During the interview, Witek revealed the exciting news for Enjin and Minecraft enthusiasts alike.

He noted: “One thing we’re working on now is actually the Minecraft launch. The Minecraft anniversary is coming up here in just a few days, and we are going to be launching a public server that uses our Enjin Coin platform.”

Anybody who owns a copy of Minecraft will be able to join the public server. Players will be able to roam around the world and complete quests – some of which will reward the player with tokenised items.

“There’s going to be some Multiverse items hidden in the world as well, so players can discover some chests and figure out how to unlock them.”

Witek went on to reveal: “We’re building out this Minecraft server with a cool little medieval world. It’s really exciting, and it’s going to be the first example of Minecraft that we’re going to put out there.”

Enjin’s Minecraft public server launch will coincide with the launch of Enjin’s Java software development kit (SDK), with the “whole thing” having been developed in Java.

The Java SDK will be released as open source soon, with the release of the Minecraft plugin set to take place a few weeks later.

“We’re going to release our Minecraft plugin to the public, and that means any Minecraft server can now integrate blockchain,” added Witek.

Interested in reading more Enjin-related stories? Discover more about the collaborative blockchain gaming Multiverse which is spearheaded by the Enjin team.

The post Enjin set to bring blockchain to Minecraft appeared first on Coin Rivet.

Ten years ago today, Minecraft made its debut into the world, marking a significant milestone in the history of video games. Just as we can’t imagine the gaming industry without this universally-loved title, which has now sold 176 million copies worldwide, we also can’t imagine what the video industry would look like without all those MinecraftYouTube videos.

Minecraft-related content has been a cornerstone to the game’s success, driving around 436B views to date on YouTube alone! In celebration of the game’s tenth anniversary, we looked at some of these videos to discover which creators, publishers, and brands are driving the conversation around Minecraft.

The Top Minecraft YouTube Videos of All Time

Minecraft and YouTube Are the Perfect Pair for Success

YouTube has been the go-to destination for content related to the game almost since the game’s inception. In 2015, for example, the game was one of the most-searched terms on YouTube and boasted the #1 spot across the top 20 game franchises on the platform.

While the popularity of Fortnite videos seems to have given Minecraft a run for its money, the sandbox-style building and adventure game is still the #1 game on YouTube.  In 2018 alone, around 311K user-generated Minecraft YouTube videos pulled in a total of 45.1B views.

Here are some other stats we discovered about the deep connection between YouTube and Minecraft:

• 5M Minecraft-related videos have been uploaded to YouTube to date.
• On average, these videos pulled in a 58.2K 30-day view count (V30) and a 30-day engagement rate (ER30) of 7.1x, which is seven times the normal engagement rate across YouTube!
• Longer Minecraft videos attract more views: clips of 10-15 minutes pulled in the most views (123B to date), with content that’s 20 minutes or longer pacing not far behind (114B views to date).
• The top five countries by views include the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Spain.
• Influencers have uploaded the most Minecraft-related YouTube videos at 4.2M. Brands claim 7532K videos, while media and entertainment companies have uploaded 9806K.

YouTube + Minecraft = one of the best matches in the entire online video world. Anyone can film their gameplay of the title and upload to the platform, while YouTube benefits from all the traffic and advertising on the clips. And of course, this symbiotic relationship gives Minecraft owner Microsoft plenty of free attention on its beloved game.

The Award for the Most Minecraft Videos Goes to Influencers

When a power trend occurs in online video, influencers are some of the first to pick up on it. And Minecraft was certainly one of the first power trends in all of digital media.

As noted above, creators and influencers have uploaded the most Minecraft-related videos to date on YouTube. Among these, four out of the top ten most-watched clips were animated song parodies by popular gaming YouTuber CaptainSparklez.

The video with the most views of all time across influencers is Sparklez’s parody of Usher’s “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love,” which pulled in 176M views and 1.8M engagements:

The creator with the most overall views is PopularMMOs with 11.7B total views on content ranging from let’s plays, arena battles, and mod showcases. DanTDM is the second most-watched Minecraft creator to date with 8.5B views, while family-favorite stampylonghead comes in third with 5.9B views.

This data is only the tip of the iceberg. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that without the support of influencers, Minecraft wouldn’t be one of the top-selling games of all time. A note to game developers, brands, and media companies alike: never underestimate the power of a fanbase and what it can do to drive interest (and sales).

Brands and Media Companies Join in on the Minecraft Fun

While influencers are clearly leading the charge in regards to Minecraft YouTube videos, brands and media companies have also contributed their fair share of content. Their 12.3K videos on YouTube have garnered an all-time total of 4.4B views.

Fittingly, the company with the most views on YouTube is the official Minecraft channel itself. At 833M total views, the channel boasts seven of the top ten most-watched videos across brands and media publishers of all time. Minecraft’s most-viewed clip is the game’s official trailer from 2011, which has 139M views (in fact, almost all of the channel’s top videos are trailers or update announcements):

Some of the other brands which showed up in our search included retailer J!NX Clothing(64.9M views), Telltale Games (79.7M views), and LEGO (241M views). All of these companies created Minecraft YouTube videos introducing their own products themed after the popular game title, and in turn, benefited from millions of views and reach.

As for media companies hopping on board the Minecraft train, we’d be remiss by not mentioning two of the top-performing channels of all time: gaming property LetsPlay and its parent company Rooster Teeth.

The former has pulled in the most media company views and engagements to date at 492M views and 7.9M engagements, while the latter claims 369M views and 5M engagements. Rooster Teeth has been making game-related content since before YouTube even existed, so it makes sense that some of the company’s most-watched videos are on its Minecraft content.

Other media companies pulling in millions of views and high engagement rates on Minecraft YouTube videos include animation and cartoon company Mineworks (294M views and 2.2M engagements), gaming media and news company IGN (59.4M views and 632K engagements), and entertainment channel Smosh Games (169M views and 2.9M engagements).

Here’s to More Minecraft in Online Video

Of course, the breadth of Minecraft’s impact in the online video world doesn’t end here. Gamers around the world upload or stream live content related to the title on other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitch on a daily basis.

But this sampling of Minecraft-themed content on YouTube alone is enough to see exactly why the game is not just so well-recognized and widely-played, but also why it has become eternally ingrained in global pop culture.

Happy tenth anniversary, Minecraft! We can’t wait to see what the next ten years hold.

The Minecraft team at Microsoft has finally taken the wraps off a new mobile augmented reality game. It’s called Minecraft Earth, and it’s going to bring an augmented reality (or AR) Minecraft world to your Android or iOS smartphone later this year.

I was among the lucky few to try an early version of Minecraft Earth. Here’s what I learned.

Minecraft Earth requires augmented reality

Pokémon Go is often called an AR game, but its blend of the virtual and real is light and optional. Yes, you can see Pokémon appear in the world through your camera, yet you also have the option to turn that off entirely. Augmented reality is not a requirement.

Minecraft Earth is different. The game requires use of augmented reality because it always maps in-game elements to the real world. An overworld map based off Open Street Maps data exists, but when it comes time to see Minecraft come to life, you have no fallback option. You must use your camera, and you must hold your phone up to play.

The overworld will look familiar

Minecraft Earth lets you explore a virtual world built on Open Street Maps data of our real world. The graphics are given a bit of blocky Minecraft paint, but the overall look and feel of the overworld map isn’t far off previous games in this genre. It’s full of things you can tap for rewards when GPS says you’re close enough (I was told the range will be about 70 meters). These are officially called “tapables.”

Like Pokémon Go and other competitors, Minecraft Earth will be making some judgement calls about where game objects should be located. They will appear only in “public” spaces, and will avoid private residence, businesses, or places that could be dangerous, like busy roads.

Tapables reward you with blocks, items, or animals. There’s a variety of rarities, from common cobblestone to very rare obsidian.

The augmented reality adventures are unique

Tapables are only one thing you’ll find on the map. You’ll also encounter Adventures, and that’s where Minecraft Earth starts to set itself apart.

Adventures are essentially mini-games that are linked to a specific real-world location. You might be walking through a park and see an Adventure appear. Walk up to it and you’ll see, through your phone, some Minecraft blocks on the ground. You can walk up to mine them, and when you do, you might uncover a cave with skeletons to kill or a puzzle to solve.

All this happens in AR through your phone, so what’s happening in the game mirrors reality. If you want to dodge an enemy’s arrow, you must move. If you want to pick up loot sitting twenty feet away, you must walk there. There’s no shortcuts or alternatives to playing in AR.

You can play at home, too

You find Tapables in the real world, and Adventures as well. Does that mean you have to stop playing when you get home?

Nope! Minecraft Earth lets you play in your living room by throwing down a Build Plate. That’s where the blocks you collected on your commute or a walk through the nearest park can be used to build a home, a castle, or a dungeon.

Build Plates map themselves to a flat surface in your play space (a table, in most cases) and give you a god’s eye view for easy editing. However, you can blow up the Build Plate to life-size scale to experience what your creation looks like from a first-person perspective.

You can also invite friends to visit your Build Plate, though only so long as they’re in the same room as you. There’s no online multi-player in the traditional sense. And make sure your friends are trustworthy because, like with a normal Minecraftserver, they change the build plate when they visit.

It’s free-to-play, and micro-transaction details are slim

Minecraft Earth will be a free-to-play game. Microtransactions will certainly be a part of the experience, but details about what will be sold and how much it will cost remain thin. The developers of course promise the game won’t be “pay to win.” However, since the game is almost entirely cooperative – there’s no PvP of any kind – it’s unclear what the lack of “pay to win” will mean in practice.

The developers say the game won’t have loot boxes.

It runs the Bedrock engine

Despite its differences, Minecraft Earth still runs the same Bedrock engine that’s used in Minecraft. It’s an important point, and one the developers took care to maintain. The vanilla game is now 10 years old and has a huge fan base that’s come to know and love certain in-game oddities, like the specific way water flows, or how redstone switches work.

All that knowledge you’ve retained from Minecraft continues to apply in the mobile game. Minecraft Earth does have a few unique blocks and mobs, but they’re variations instead of all-new mechanics. You might run across a “Muddy Pig” that loves mud like no pig you’ve seen before, but it otherwise looks and acts like any other Minecraft pig.

Can you craft?

Yes, you can. The game will drop the traditional three-by-three grid for simple recipes, but the recipes will be familiar to Minecraft players. With that said, exact details about what can and can’t be crafted, and the materials required, haven’t been made public yet.

Can you use mods?

No, you can’t. Mod support has not been ruled out in the future, but it’s not planned for launch and there’s no timeline for when it might be included.

Is cross-play supported?

No. Minecraft Earth may use the same Bedrock game engine as Minecraft, but it’s a very different game in most respects. You can’t play with people playing vanilla Minecraft and you can’t import or export creations from Minecraft Earth to Minecraft.

Can you play on HoloLens?

The Minecraft team previously announced a HoloLens version of the game. The experience working on that helped inform the team working on Minecraft Earth, but the two games are separate entities and there’s no plan to make Minecraft Earthavailable on Microsoft HoloLens or HoloLens 2.

You’ll need a beefy phone

The game’s recommended technical specifications aren’t official, but I tried the game on a selection of Apple hardware that, to my eye, appeared to be the latest Apple iPhone XS. Playing the game caused the phone to become quite warm, a good indication that it was using all it had to render Minecraft Earth.

Augmented reality games tend to be demanding. They run best on relatively new hardware. They also drain battery life quickly. There’s no reason to think Minecraft Earth will be different. You’ll want a recently released phone for the best experience, and don’t forget to bring a portable battery.

When is the beta, and how do I join?

The closed beta will launch “this summer” on both iOS and Android. Entry will be limited, though the developers expect they’ll be able to invite “hundreds of thousands” of players over time, so your chances are good. You’ll also receive a free character skin if you sign up for the beta.

You can sign up on Minecraft Earth’s website. Note that players have to be 18 years or older.

And when’s the release date?

The final, full release date hasn’t been announced. Minecraft Earth is slated to come out later in 2019 and the team seems confident it will hit that window.

You can expect to hear more about the game at E3 2019.