Just before students head back to school, Microsoft is releasing its Minecraft: Education Edition for the iPad. The educational version of the popular block-builder game launched in 2016, and will be available for the iPad starting next month.

In March, Apple announced a cheaper iPad geared specifically toward teachers and students, in an effort to catch up to Google’s dominance of the education market. (Google’s Chromebooks have nearly 60% market share for education hardware in the US.)

The iPad version of Minecraft: Education Edition will also help Microsoft ride on Apple’s coattails into the classroom. Though Microsoft offers other educational software products like Microsoft 365—its productivity suite that includes apps like Powerpoint and Microsoft Word—this new release will help make education software more accessible, especially to younger students for whom Minecraft is already incredibly popular. Microsoft bought Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014.

Microsoft says Minecraft: Education Edition already has 35 million users in 115 countries, and given the new iPad version, those numbers will likely grow.

A Minecraft modder has added some fresh gameplay issues for players to deal with in the form of climate change. Nick Porillo’s GlobalWarming mod alters the atmosphere based on certain actions like smelting ores. Temperatures will rise as carbon emissions increase, leading to violent storms, forest fires and a drop in snowfall levels as climate change takes hold.

You can combat the changes in the atmosphere by planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide. To combat the issue on a larger scale, you can purchase carbon offsets, which gives other players a tree-planting bounty to complete — that reflects one of the mod’s themes of working together to fight climate change.

“If the majority of players don’t agree to be near-carbon-neutral in how they play, then the carbon score will only continue to rise in-game. Once the damage negatively impacts the players, they will begin paying back that ‘debt’ they accrued,” Porillo told Motherboard. “The idea is if the players put a little more effort in from the start to not emit a ton, then they can entirely avoid the price to be paid later.”

He plans to add more features, such as a scorecard that lets you see who the least carbon-neutral players are, finding out your own carbon footprint and adding methane as a second greenhouse gas. The mod works with Minecraft’s Server Java Edition and you can download it from GitHub.

Director and co-writer Rob McElhenney is no longer working on Warner Bros.’s film adaptation of “Minecraft,” according to The Wrap.

The “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star was picked to direct the film in 2015, but now it’s not happening, he recently told The Wrap. Warner reportedly asked the writer/director duo of Adam and Aaron Nee to write a new script. “Wonder Woman” scribe Jason Fuchs wrote the previous draft with McElhenney. The Nee brothers are best known for “The Last Romantic” (2006) and “Band of Robbers” (2015). They’re also directing the upcoming “Masters of the Universe” film.

McElhenney is the second director to leave the project. Originally, “Night at the Museum” director Shawn Levy and writers Kieran Mulroney and Michele Mulroney were brought in to work on the film, but they left in 2014 after reportedly presenting new ideas to the studio that didn’t mesh with what Mojang was looking for. Levy is now supposedly working on the upcoming “Uncharted” film starring Tom Holland as a young Nathan Drake.

The “Minecraft” film’s release date will be pushed back because of the shakeup, The Wrap reports. It was originally scheduled to come out on May 24, 2019.

“Minecraft” is a sandbox building game created by Markus Persson and later developed by Swedish developer Mojang. It launched in 2011 and is now the second best-selling video game of all time behind “Tetris,” with over 144 million copies sold across multiple platforms. Persson sold Mojang and “Minecraft” to Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion.

Steve Carell is expected to star in the movie. Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to the franchise from Mojang. Roy Lee is producing it through his Vertigo Entertainment production company with Jill Messick.

The Minecraft Marketplace is about to get the followup on a serious 1-2 punch that could boost creator’s revenues and downloads through the end of July. The Minecraft Team at Microsoft launched the first Minecraft Summer Sale today. As part of this event, most of the content on the Marketplace is getting a steep discount.

While the Summer Sale may get fans downloading more content this month, last month it was the Nintendo Switch that helped fuel sales. The Minecraft Marketplace had 396,511 downloads in June, which is up from 285,816 in April. With the Marketplace hitting Switch for the first time beginning June 26, it’s likely that Nintendo’s platform contributed significantly to that total. You can see past results by tracking the Minecraft Marketplace sales charts here.

But now that Switch is integrated into the Minecraft platform, developers can focus on making their content and the Summer Sale. Some, like Gamemode One founder Sean Davidson, thinks discounts are exactly what some players are waiting for before they spend their money on Minecraft microtransactions.

“We hope and expect that the Minecraft Summer Sale will increase player accessibility to content and potentially drive increased traffic over the remainder of the year,” said Davidson. “Access to products at a discounted rate is a great way to give players and buyers on the fence a chance to see what the Marketplace has to offer.”

Developer Imagiverse has even spent the last few weeks preparing its Lapis Lagoon waterpark map for the sale (it’s already out). This update will roll out to everyone who owns it, and Imagiverse wants positive word-of-mouth to help it perform well in the sale.

“We focused on making sure Lapis Lagoon was going to give the player the best possible waterpark experience they could have in-game,” a spokesperson for Imagiverse explained in a note to GamesBeat. “Old and new players alike will appreciate the work we put into the map getting it ready for the sale.”

Let’s do the charts. Here are the 10 most downloaded pieces of content from the Minecraft Marketplace for June 2018:

Click to view slideshow.
Here it is in list form:

City Life
Mineville Highschool
Dinosaur Park
Planes
Dinosaur Island
Monsters of the Deep
Wildlife: Savanna
Mutant Battle Arena
Prison Escape
Lucky Block Escape
And here are the 10 highest-grossing pieces of content for June 2018:

Click to view slideshow.
List:

City Life
Dinosaur Park
Planes
Dinosaur Island
Monsters of the Deep
Wildlife: Savanna
Mutant Battle Arena
Mineville Highschool
Super Racers
Lucky Block Escape
Next month, we’ll get to see how the Summer Sale affects the charts. This is a big chance for Marketplace partners, and it could turn into one of the biggest months for the Minecraft store so far.

Correction, 12:14 p.m.: Sean Davidson’s name was misspelled as Sean David in the original article. We have corrected the error, and we apologize.

The Minecraft Team at Microsoft has landed a major combination with its first Summer Sale and the launch of the Minecraft Marketplace on the Nintendo Switch. Those big moves have led to a growth spurt for the block-building game’s content store, which served up a massive 669,795 downloads in July. That’s up from 396,511 downloads in June, which was already impressive on its own. The Minecraft Team doesn’t share how much money the Marketplace generates each month, but most creations sell for around $1-to-$5. At a hypothetical average of $2 per download, the store could have generated more than $1 million in sales last month.

Minecraft’s Marketplace Summer Sale began July 19 and through the end of the month. The game’s development team worked with its partners, many of whom are small third-party content creators, to discount their Marketplace products by as much as 50 percent. That fueled intense interest from fans who wanted to get the most bang for their buck.

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This reveals that many fans are aware of the Minecraft Marketplace and think about using it regularly, but they want to hold off for better prices. That’s something that Mojang, the studio responsible for Minecraft, and Marketplace creators can take advantage of.

But enough of all that, let’s get to the charts.

Top 10 most downloaded
4. City Life 4. City Life
Here it is in list form:

Kingdom Survival
Millionaire Mansions
Mineville High School
City Life
Castles & Dragons
Dinosaur Park
Isles of Aloha
Spring Mini-Games Festival
Dinosaur Island
Prison Escape
Top 10 highest grossing
4. Dinosaur Park 4. Dinosaur Park
Here it is in list form:

Millionaire Mansions
City Life
Castles & Dragons
Dinosaur Park
Mineville High School
Dinosaur Island
Wildlife: Savanna
Chroma Hills
Planes
Dwarven Mining Company
We’ll be back with more news from the Minecraft Marketplace next month.

Minefaire: The Ultimate Minecraft Experience event is coming to the Schaumburg Convention Center Saturday, Sept. 8 and Sunday, Sept. 9.

Between 12,000 to 15,000 attendees are expected to attend the event involving one of the most popular video games.

Minefaire is the brain child of two fathers who realized they needed to bridge the gap between children who love Minecraft, and parents who may not fully understand the game and its educational aspects.

“Minecraft was the ‘go-to’ activity for my four kids before dinner, and I realized how much the game was teaching them about topics like agriculture, history, geology and architecture — all without their feeling like they were being ‘taught,'” says Minefaire Co-Founder Gabe Young. “Kids at Minefaire get to grab their parents by the hand and say, ‘Look what I’m doing.’ As parents, we then have the chance to better understand our children and guide them.”

Minecraft is a virtual game where you build new worlds, block by block, by mining the resources you find and crafting them into structures that might include staircases, mazes and amusement parks. For more information or to purchase tickets, go to Minefaire.com.

Ever since the release of Minecraft seven years ago, players from young kids to full-grown adults have been incredibly creative in customizing the game’s world. However, nothing beats this realistic creation of Sayama City, which is a fictional Japanese city made entirely in the game.

At first glance, images of Sayama City can easily fool people that they are looking at actual real-life photos, which goes to show how detailed and realistic this Minecraft city is. The images were uploaded by a Twitter account named Sayama_City (via Kotaku), which has been uploading pictures of the project since 2015. Given all the attention that the fictional city is getting right now, it is expected that the creators of Sayama will upload more updates soon.

Check out the images of the project below by Twitter user Sayama_City:

What do you think of this fantastic Minecraft city?

Check out link: http://gametyrant.com/news/check-out-this-fictional-japanese-city-made-in-minecraft

Minecraft is a worldwide sensation which has sold millions upon millions of copies to date. The game is available on everything from desktops to mobile phones. A few years ago, Microsoft purchased the game from its creators and has since greatly expanded its scope. However, when it comes to games, the company has always struggled in the Japanese market. With Minecraft though, it seems like that’s changing.

According to a report in Nintendo Life, Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition sold 25,948 copies last week. So far, it’s sold over 212,170 units to date. Minecraft on Nintendo Switch beat games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Tennis Aces.

Minecraft on Switch was the #1 best-seller on the gaming charts in Japan last week. WOOT! https://t.co/qtP2xwewsj

— Aubrey Norris (@Chupacaubrey) August 24, 2018
A few weeks ago, Minecraft on Nintendo Switch was updated to the “Bedrock” edition. This allows players to access a lot of new features and play with gamers on other platforms like Xbox One and Windows 10. If you already bought the old version on Nintendo Switch, you can download it for free. Sony still doesn’t support cross-play so the Bedrock version isn’t available on PlayStation 4.

Hopefully Microsoft’s success with Minecraft will result in more visibility for the company in the country. If you look at console sales figures, the Xbox One only sells a dozen or so units each week. Maybe if there were more Microsoft experiences like Minecraft that appealed to Japanese gamers, it would be a boost for the company’s console ambitions.

See at Amazon

Keep an eye on WindowsCentral.com/Gaming for all the latest in Xbox and Windows 10 gaming, accessories, news, and reviews!

You are looking at Sayama City, a Minecraft-made fictional Japanese city with echoes of Osaka, Tokyo and more.

It’s like a photo.

Check out the detail.

The project’s official Twitter has been updating since 2015. Expect more jaw-dropping updates in the future.

Super Mario and Pikachu are two of the most recognisable characters on the planet, but you know what’s better than both of these individuals? Mario Pikachu, that’s what.

No, you’re not dreaming. All of these images are real. Mario Pikachu isn’t a figment of your addled imagination, strained from hours of watching Nintendo Switch footage for clues about touchscreens and expandable storage. This is reality, my friends. It exists in the real world. It is, to put it bluntly, “a thing”.

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The range – which is real, don’t forget – includes plush toys, playing cards, shirts, notepads and even a 3DS shell. Sweet Lord above.

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Pokémon centers in Japan will be selling all of the merchandise shown on this page from October 29th. We’re seriously considering a trip to the Far East just to make sure this isn’t some elaborate joke designed to toy with our fragile minds.

Releasing Minecraft on a popular but ageing New Nintendo 3DS was something of a masterstroke, but the recent news that Japan was getting a New Nintendo 2DS: Creeper Edition left us scratching our heads; surely a global launch was in order? Well, it seems that this may be happening – at least if Nintendo Russia is to be believed.

Images of the console, complete with age ratings for European countries, have been seen in a PDF file sent by Nintendo RU alongside other Gamescom 2018 news. It’s worth noting that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition isn’t currently available in Europe, but the PDF has no other information about the game or the new 2DS console, leaving us with only pretty thumbnails to look at.

Minecraft 2DS Creeper Edition
Buried in official announcements, this gaffe went unnoticed by the Russian games media for the whole of Gamescom week, and no official announcements were forthcoming following the event. Was the PR pushed back at the last minute by Nintendo RU? Who knows, but the existence of packaging with EU age ratings would suggest that the Creeper console is indeed headed to Europe at some point, and it would make sense to finally launch the game in Europe at the same time.

Minecraft is one of the most popular games of this generation, and is available for pretty much every platform, from PC to iOS and Android. It runs really well on most devices, but it could always be better – especially if you’ve got a PC with a lot of RAM to take advantage of. The issue is that, by default, Minecraft is only allocated 1GB of RAM – not great if you’ve got 8- or 16GB of RAM in your PC.

While it was once rather complex to allocate more RAM in Minecraft, the 2.0.0 update changed all that. Here’s how to allocate more RAM in Minecraft on PC and for those running Minecraft on a server.

If you want to play other Minecraft-esque games, be sure to check out our list of the best alternatives to Minecraft.

How to allocate more RAM in Minecraft (V2.0.0 or later)
While it was once a complex task to manually allocate more RAM in Minecraft, Microsoft changed all that with the release of version 2.0.0. Minecraft now offers the ability to adjust RAM in the Minecraft Launcher, with no need to edit text files and risk corrupting the game. Here’s how:

Make sure you’ve got the latest version of Minecraft installed (excluding the demo, which is capped at v1.5).
Check your computer’s total RAM by going to Start > Settings > System > About.
Open the Minecraft Launcher by double-clicking the Minecraft icon on your desktop.
Click the Launch Options tab in the top-right of the window.
Make sure Advanced Settings is enabled (green switch) and select the profile you’d like to edit. If there’s only a single profile, click it.
Toggle on the JVM arguments switch.
A line of text should appear, including the phrase -X1G. Change the 1 to the number of gigabytes of RAM that you’d like to allocate to Minecraft. You shouldn’t allow Minecraft to use more than two-thirds of your overall RAM, or you may run into other issues.
Click Save at the bottom of the window to save your changes.
And that’s it! The next time you load up Minecraft, it’ll use the specific amount of RAM you allocated.

How to allocate more RAM in a Minecraft Server
The process to adjust the amount of RAM Minecraft uses when hosted on a server is slightly different, as it’s not baked into the Launcher like the standard game. It’s not too complicated though:

Open your Minecraft server directory (the folder that contains the Minecraft_server.exe file you launch the Minecraft server with). If you’re unsure of the location, search “Minecraft_server” on your PC.
Click Home > New Item > Text Document on PC to create a text document in the server directory.
In the new text document, paste the following (if on PC):
java -Xmx####M -Xms####M -exe Minecraft_Server.exe -o true
PAUSE
Replace #### with the value, in MB, that you want to allocate (1GB = 1024MB). For example, if you want to allocate 2GB of RAM, you’d enter 2048.
Click File > Save As… and change Save as type to All Files. Name the file server launcher and change the extension from .txt to .bat.
The file you created will now be the new launcher for your Minecraft server – simply double-click it to run. Using the .bat file to launch the server will automatically allocate the specified amount of RAM.
See, easy right? Now go back to enjoying your voxel-based game with better performance than ever before!

Minecraft remains an incredibly popular game even to this day, but there are some issues which need to be addressed. For example, the user interface (UI) could be much better and more streamlined. Luckily, Microsoft is aware of these problems and plans on updating the menus in the near future.

Today, a post on Minecraft’s website detailed some of the changes coming to the game. The team wants players to contribute their menu designs by downloading templates and sharing them online.

Menus! They’re essential for helping you navigate Minecraft and get to what you want with ease. That’s why we’ve started working on a major redesign of the Minecraft menu… for all Bedrock Engine-based platforms (so that’s Minecraft on Xbox One, Windows 10, virtual reality, mobile devices, and Nintendo Switch). What would you like to see from an updated Minecraft menu? Whatever your ideas are, we’d love to see them… share your designs with us… you can do that on our our Minecraft Discord channel.

It’ll be interesting to see what fans come up with. Hopefully the developer will incorporate a lot of feedback to make navigating the UI even better. We’ll keep you posted as soon as the team finalizes its plans and shares the new look. Until then, be sure to contribute your ideas. Please keep in mind that the ‘Bedrock’ version isn’t available on PlayStation because Sony blocks cross-play.

Kenilworth Castle rebuilt Minecraft-style
The ruins of Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire have been “rebuilt” using the computer game Minecraft.

English Heritage commissioned the project as part of its Love Castles season.

14 Aug 2018

Minecraft fans rejoice! The largest convention for a single video game is coming to Austin Sept. 15-16. Minefaire is expected to bring 15,000 people to the Austin Convention Center to celebrate the game.
What’s the big deal about Minecraft? If you have a kid in elementary school, you know.

See a video of the convention:

Here are some of the things you can expect to see at Minefaire:

Minecraft Virtual Reality Experience: Play Minecraft with virtual reality.
Learning Lab: Learn from Minecraft Education Global Mentors who use Minecraft in the classroom.
Build Battles and Challenges: Compete in live gaming arenas, code within the game and learn to solve problems in creative ways.
Minecraft Costume Contest: Dress up, dance and have fun on stage as your favorite Minecraft characters.
YouTube Meet & Greets: Meet Minecraft YouTube superstars who will share their favorite tips and tricks.
Nonstop, Live Stage Shows: Multiple stages will show different Minecraft experiences for different skill levels.
World’s Largest Official Minecraft Merchandise: Of course, there will be shopping.
Tickets are $49-$69.50, but kids younger than 2 are free. Find them at Minefaire.com.

Microsoft is bringing ‘Minecraft: Education Edition’ to the iPad, allowing the version of the block-based construction game for schools to be used via the iPad, giving educators another way to use the game in the classroom.

The educational version of the game will be accessible on iPad from September, around the start of the new school year for most students. The app will be a free download from the App Store, and is designed for use with the Education Edition subscription sold from Microsoft.

Made to combine teaching with the popular building game, schools are able to license it through Microsoft 365 for Education or separate volume licenses, with free trials also available. The edition offers teachers a number of resources to incorporate Minecraft into their classes, including lesson plans, courses, technical support, and mentorship.

Subjects available range from the traditional STEM areas to other areas, including languages, art, and history, among other topics. As well as allowing students to build within the game, the Education Edition also adds in extra features to monitor progress and to allow teachers to lead lessons in the tool.

The move to iPad expands the educational version from Windows PCs and the Xbox, enabling it to be used by schools who have embraced Apple’s tablets in lessons.

“Minecraft: Eduction Edition on iPad unlocks new and intuitive ways of collaborating and sharing and has revolutionized the way our students and teachers explore curriculum and projects,” said Kyriakos Koursaris, head of education technology for PaRK International School. “The features allow for deep and meaningful learning, and the values it promotes, from inclusivity to 21 century skills, empower everyone to use technology with extraordinary results.”

At the same time, Microsoft advises some features from the Education Edition will be arriving in the consumer version. Users of the Windows 10 and Xbox console versions of Minecraft will soon be able to use the Chemistry Resource Pack, which teaches lessons about elements and compounds, the periodic table, and allows the creation of new items including helium balloons, sparklers, latex, and underwater torches.

A report claims that Microsoft is going to implement a new feature into Xbox One called Xbox Community Content that will bring mods and other creations into games at a system-wide level. Sound familiar? Well, it should. That’s similar to the Minecraft Marketplace, which had 295,850 downloads from players acquiring new content in May. And, as always, that content was a mix of worlds, skin packs, and more from the Minecraft Team and its third-party community partners.

But now that the Minecraft Marketplace has proven this can work, Microsoft seems to think it can bring it to other games on its platform. That’s something we’ve seen with Steam Workshop, but it could have an even bigger effect on consoles where modding a game outside of official channels is too difficult for most people.

I’ll be watching to see what Microsoft does with its Community Content platform. For now, it says it has nothing to announce on the subject. But we can still see what’s doing well on the Minecraft Marketplace.

Let’s do the charts.

Here are the top-10 most downloaded pieces of content from the Minecraft Marketplace in May 2018:

Click to view slideshow.
Here’s the top 10 downloads in list form:

City Life
Monsters of the Deep
Prison Escape
BrightStart Daycare
Wildlife: Savanna
Dinosaur Island
Abstraction: Cubes
The Bastion
Summer Mini Games Festival
Relics of the Sky
And here’s the top-grossing list for May 2018:

Click to view slideshow.
And the list:

City Life
Monsters of the Deep
Relics of the Sky
Wildlife: Savanna
Dinosaur Island
Super Racers!
HeroFair
Prison Escape
BrightStart Daycare
Primaveral Tropics
Next month, we’ll get the results from Minecraft Marketplace in June when the platform finally hit Nintendo’s Switch. It should be interesting to see if that causes an increase in downloads as a new platform gets access to community creations.

Even if you can’t quite place the name, there’s a very good chance that you’ve played games Certain Affinity has worked on. Across the last 12 years, the Austin-based developer has been involved with everything from the Call of Duty series to, most recently, World of Tanks’ World Cup soccer mode. Certain Affinity has made a name for itself as a co-developer, but two years into its second decade, the studio is undergoing some significant changes.

“Historically we’ve been super below the radar because we always end up supporting other people, almost always with their big internal development studios, who really, just to be frank, prefer to be the ones in the limelight,” says president and founder Max Hoberman. “A lot of that’s changing because we’re in the process of transitioning to lead development, with original IP development also being a much larger portion of what we do as a company.”

Before setting up Certain Affinity, Hoberman had worked at Bungie for a decade, from right out of college. That was 1997. By the time Halo 2 came around, Hoberman had moved from the publishing side to launching and running Bungie.net, and then again to working on Halo full time, specifically the multiplayer.

“It’s funny, all the ways people interact with games on their consoles today, all the staple foundational ones, I had a hand in,” says Hoberman. “It was a long time ago. But I remember there was a time where I was actually a developer full time, for five or six years. In another life?”

Spreading out
Though he got to wear a lot of hats, the future at Bungie was Halo and Destiny-shaped, and Hoberman wanted more variety. This isn’t the only reason Certain Affinity leaned towards partnering with other developers on projects like Doom’s multiplayer, however. At Bungie, Hoberman had seen the difficulty of moving from developing a single game, Myth, to working on multiple projects.

“I made a decision from the get-go that if we are going to be a multi-project studio, we should be that from day one,” Hoberman explains. “That really was what guided me. I’d say the variety was a fringe benefit in that respect. But the real driving force was this: when I started Certain Affinity, the long term ambition was to absolutely create a powerhouse, triple-A, world class, independent developer who was able to work on multiple franchises at once. Sort of modeled after Blizzard in a lot of ways.”

That sort of lofty goal isn’t something you reach quickly. For the first decade, Certain Affinity immersed itself in other developers’ worlds and designed ancillary content, jumping between them while occasionally working on original projects.

“What differentiates us is we’re really, at the core, a co-developer who will jump in—we’ll take on a chunk of people’s games and we’ll actually co-develop as an extension of their internal team,” Hoberman says. “We’ll take an entire chunk of the game and do lead development on it, soup to nuts. There are companies that really specialize. There’s an engineering shop where specialized engineers in networking will bring your game online. There are UI and UX specialists. There are people who specialize in ports and platform transitions and these sorts of things. But we’re actually similar to the core teams that are developing these games.

“Take Doom, for instance. We took on all the multiplayer development for Doom. We actually came on board at a time when their internal team and single-player, core game mechanics, everything, were in utter chaos. They were going through a lot of transitions of their own. We stepped in and we took on the multiplayer. We ended up working hand-in-hand with the team over at id as they got their stuff sorted out and ultimately made a really amazing game. We were there lockstep with them, really in many ways, an extension of their team.”

For the next decade, however, Certain Affinity wants to invert that. Original development will make up the bulk of the studio’s work, and partnering up with other developers will supplement that.

At the moment, the studio is in the midst of that transition. It’s not completely made the shift, but it’s already changed significantly over the last two years. Around 60-70 percent of the team are working on a pair of games where Certain Affinity is the lead developer. Since neither game has been released yet, Hoberman’s not quite ready to call the transition complete. He wants to repeat the process and show that this is the direction the studio is dedicated to.

This change in priorities has given the studio a chance to work on its own FPS, after years of working on the likes of Call of Duty and Halo. When co-development made up the bulk of its work, Hoberman was hesitant about any original project being an FPS because the designers were already involved in FPS co-development work.

“I was afraid that would create some real strain on our co-development, which was paying the bills,” Hoberman recalls. “So I always tried to do things that were a little bit different, not FPS explicitly. And I think in hindsight that was actually a big mistake. At that 10-year mark, when we did some reflection and looked back and thought about moving forward, it became apparent that we were really hamstringing ourselves by not working on FPS. We have so much FPS experience at the studio, and so much action shooter experience in general, the bulk of it being first-person. It seemed like we were shooting ourselves in the foot, not trying to go big with something that played to our strengths. We made a huge shift and really decided we’re going to do something original in FPS.”

A new expedition
With Last Expedition, Certain Affinity gets to do that. It’s a co-op FPS with a survival layer. Four unfortunate souls land on an alien world that is far from pleased to have human visitors; it’s determined to kill them. So the survivors have to band together, building and fending off the excitable local wildlife. Hoberman’s not revealing more than the broad strokes, but clearly has very high hopes for it.

“It’s highly, highly novel and original. The production quality is really high because that’s what we do. It’s going really well. We actually playtest several times a week. You go in there and everyone’s yelling and screaming and having a good time, which is the best measure of success–when you enjoy your own work and want to be in there playtesting it.”

Alongside that, the studio is also developing an original Transformers title. It’s the largest project at Certain Affinity right now, and the studio’s biggest to date. It’s still very much under wraps, however, locked up in a vault protected by burly Autobots.

When it was working primarily as a co-developer, Certain Affinity didn’t have to concern itself with a game’s business model, but the transition has now made that a priority. Like a lot of studio bosses, Hoberman believes that games as a service is the right way to go.

“Most of the huge success stories these days are games that operate as a service,” he says. “They’re not one and done, or one and wait a few years for the sequel. They really are these living, breathing, continuously enhanced and developed experiences. We’re wholly embracing that shift. As we shift into lead development, we also have to shift into a model where we’re primarily developing games as a service.”

“It’s interesting because that’s not the bulk of what we’ve worked on,” he continues. “The Halos and Dooms and Call of Dutys. There’s multiple transitions that we’re going through as a company as we prepare for this. In that sense, both the Transformers game and Last Expedition have been designed from the ground up to be games as a service, to be games that become people’s hobbies that they play day in and day out, for months and years, and that we’re continuously improving and enhancing.”

It’s been a challenge to get to this point, says Hoberman, which isn’t even the end, but rather another beginning. But it’s worked out for the studio, which has turned a profit every year and has done so without laying anyone off. That, in particular, is something he’s extremely proud of; that, and the culture that has been built up over the last 12 years.

“For the game industry, we’ve built an incredibly unusual place to work,” he says. “We have an incredibly diverse workforce, way more diverse than the game industry at large. A much higher percentage of women developers, that’s one example. We have an incredibly inclusive culture. We have an incredibly mature, no-bullshit, no-ego culture. We have a staff that’s unbelievably talented. Everyone says that, but it’s a fact around here. It’s required to do the type of work we do. Really high end, jumping in and putting out fires and taking things over at the last minute, knocking them out of the park on time and on budget.”

Now Certain Affinity gets to do the same for its own games.

The Minecraft Marketplace is about to get the followup on a serious 1-2 punch that could boost creator’s revenues and downloads through the end of July. The Minecraft Team at Microsoft launched the first Minecraft Summer Sale today. As part of this event, most of the content on the Marketplace is getting a steep discount.

While the Summer Sale may get fans downloading more content this month, last month it was the Nintendo Switch that helped fuel sales. The Minecraft Marketplace had 396,511 downloads in June, which is up from 285,816 in April. With the Marketplace hitting Switch for the first time beginning June 26, it’s likely that Nintendo’s platform contributed significantly to that total. You can see past results by tracking the Minecraft Marketplace sales charts here.

But now that Switch is integrated into the Minecraft platform, developers can focus on making their content and the Summer Sale. Some, like Gamemode One founder Sean Davidson, thinks discounts are exactly what some players are waiting for before they spend their money on Minecraft microtransactions.

“We hope and expect that the Minecraft Summer Sale will increase player accessibility to content and potentially drive increased traffic over the remainder of the year,” said Davidson. “Access to products at a discounted rate is a great way to give players and buyers on the fence a chance to see what the Marketplace has to offer.”

Developer Imagiverse has even spent the last few weeks preparing its Lapis Lagoon waterpark map for the sale (it’s already out). This update will roll out to everyone who owns it, and Imagiverse wants positive word-of-mouth to help it perform well in the sale.

“We focused on making sure Lapis Lagoon was going to give the player the best possible waterpark experience they could have in-game,” a spokesperson for Imagiverse explained in a note to GamesBeat. “Old and new players alike will appreciate the work we put into the map getting it ready for the sale.”

Let’s do the charts. Here are the 10 most downloaded pieces of content from the Minecraft Marketplace for June 2018:

Click to view slideshow.
Here it is in list form:

City Life
Mineville Highschool
Dinosaur Park
Planes
Dinosaur Island
Monsters of the Deep
Wildlife: Savanna
Mutant Battle Arena
Prison Escape
Lucky Block Escape
And here are the 10 highest-grossing pieces of content for June 2018:

Click to view slideshow.
List:

City Life
Dinosaur Park
Planes
Dinosaur Island
Monsters of the Deep
Wildlife: Savanna
Mutant Battle Arena
Mineville Highschool
Super Racers
Lucky Block Escape
Next month, we’ll get to see how the Summer Sale affects the charts. This is a big chance for Marketplace partners, and it could turn into one of the biggest months for the Minecraft store so far.

Correction, 12:14 p.m.: Sean Davidson’s name was misspelled as Sean David in the original article. We have corrected the error, and we apologize.

The Minecraft Team at Microsoft has landed a major combination with its first Summer Sale and the launch of the Minecraft Marketplace on the Nintendo Switch. Those big moves have led to a growth spurt for the block-building game’s content store, which served up a massive 669,795 downloads in July. That’s up from 396,511 downloads in June, which was already impressive on its own. The Minecraft Team doesn’t share how much money the Marketplace generates each month, but most creations sell for around $1-to-$5. At a hypothetical average of $2 per download, the store could have generated more than $1 million in sales last month.

Minecraft’s Marketplace Summer Sale began July 19 and through the end of the month. The game’s development team worked with its partners, many of whom are small third-party content creators, to discount their Marketplace products by as much as 50 percent. That fueled intense interest from fans who wanted to get the most bang for their buck.

This reveals that many fans are aware of the Minecraft Marketplace and think about using it regularly, but they want to hold off for better prices. That’s something that Mojang, the studio responsible for Minecraft, and Marketplace creators can take advantage of.

But enough of all that, let’s get to the charts.

Top 10 most downloaded
4. City Life 4. City Life
Here it is in list form:

Kingdom Survival
Millionaire Mansions
Mineville High School
City Life
Castles & Dragons
Dinosaur Park
Isles of Aloha
Spring Mini-Games Festival
Dinosaur Island
Prison Escape
Top 10 highest grossing
8. Chroma Hills 8. Chroma Hills
Here it is in list form:

Millionaire Mansions
City Life
Castles & Dragons
Dinosaur Park
Mineville High School
Dinosaur Island
Wildlife: Savanna
Chroma Hills
Planes
Dwarven Mining Company
We’ll be back with more news from the Minecraft Marketplace next month.