Mojang is officially pulling the plug on Minecraft’s high-end graphics overhaul, announcing today that the Super Duper Graphics Pack it announced at E3 back in 2017 will no longer see the light of day.
The reason for the cancelation, Mojang notes in a post on the Minecraft website, is the addition proved too difficult to implement in the game without having a significant impact on Minecraft‘s performance.
The pack aimed to build Xbox One X and high-end PC targeted enhancements into Mojang’s still-thriving blocky builder, including 4K and HDR support, new shaders, and lighting effects.
On any project, it can be difficult to know when to cut your losses when something just isn’t working out, especially when years of resources and work have been poured into the feature in question. For Mojang, the decision comes after rebuilding parts of Minecraft’s Bedrock Engine to work with the overhaul and years of quiet delays.
At the end of the day however, Mojang says that the game couldn’t perform at an acceptable level with the graphics pack running, and made the call back away from the project.
“Super Duper was an ambitious initiative that brought a new look to Minecraft but, unfortunately, the pack proved too technically demanding to implement as planned,” explains the team. “We realize this is disappointing to some of you – there was a lot of enthusiasm for Super Duper from inside and outside the studio – but unfortunately, we aren’t happy with how the pack performed across devices. For this reason, we're stopping development on the pack, and looking into other ways for you to experience Minecraft with a new look.”
Minecraft itself has been around since 2009, and released in earnest in 2011. Despite its age, Microsoft-owned Mojang keeps a steady flow of updates headed to the game and keeps the attention of millions across several platforms. As of this May, Minecraft has sold over 176 million copies and, as of last October, maintained 91 million monthly active users.
More than two years after its initial unveiling, Mojang has finally confirmed that Minecraft's very-long-awaited Super Duper Graphics Pack is no longer in development.
Mojang initially announced the Super Duper Graphics Pack alongside Minecraft's Better Together update. While the latter was a core system update, moving all platforms (except PS4) to the game's new Bedrock version and enabling cross-play in the process, the Super Duper Graphics update was all about aesthetics; it would give the survival game a massive, optional visual overhaul, initially launching alongside the then-imminent Xbox One X version.
Better Together would bring 4K HDR support, as well as improved lighting, water, and shadows, but Super Duper Graphics would, according to Mojang's enthusiastic announcement blog, usher in all sorts of “excessive visual razzmatazz”, including dynamic shadows, directional lighting, and edge highlighting. “Light will filter in shimmering rays through cotton clouds,” it gushed, “dappling the ground beneath fluttering foliage, and sparkling on the rippling waters.” It even accompanied the announcement with an extremely lavish musical trailer:
As 2017 drew to a close, however, Mojang announced that it would be delaying the release of the Super Duper update into the following year, writing that, “there's a lot of work to be done”. And from then on out, updates grew increasingly scarce, leaving many to ponder its fate.
And, today, an answer has arrived in the form of a new post on the Minecraft website. “Super Duper was an ambitious initiative that brought a new look to Minecraft,” explained Mojang, “but, unfortunately, the pack proved too technically demanding to implement as planned.”
“There was a lot of enthusiasm for Super Duper from inside and outside the studio,” it continued, “but unfortunately, we aren't happy with how the pack performed across devices. For this reason, we're stopping development on the pack, and looking into other ways for you to experience Minecraft with a new look.”
The Minecraft Team at Microsoft has ended development of the previously promised Super Duper graphics pack. The team said that the visuals made the game too taxing.
Microsoft first announced the Super Duper pack alongside the Xbox One X reveal in 2017. The company intended to upgrade the textures and lighting to look better on 4K displays. Two years later, however, Super Duper never arrived. The Minecraft Team has instead worked on other updates for the block-building phenomenon.Recommended videosPowered by AnyClipDefining Moments in Gaming (National Video Game Day)
“Super Duper was an ambitious initiative that brought a new look to Minecraft but, unfortunately, the pack proved too technically demanding to implement as planned,” reads the Minecraft blog.
One of the problems that likely occurred is that Minecraft is now one continuous experience across devices. It is on the same version on Windows 10, smartphones, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. And all of those devices get updates at the same time. More important, they all get content from the community-powered Marketplace, so it’s important that the game looks and runs the same on everything.
“We realize this is disappointing to some of you – there was a lot of enthusiasm for Super Duper from inside and outside the studio – but unfortunately, we aren’t happy with how the pack performed across devices,” reads the Minecraft blog. “For this reason, we’re stopping development on the pack, and looking into other ways for you to experience Minecraft with a new look.”
But if any game from the last decade has proven that cutting-edge graphics aren’t crucial, it’s Minecraft.
And if you absolutely must have the most cutting edge visuals in your Minecraft, play the Java version and get some mods.
You can make it look astonishing with 4K textures and even real-time ray tracing.
Microsoft’s long-delayed upgrade to drag Minecraft’s iconic blocky look into the modern age has been scrapped all together.
On Monday, Minecraft developer Mojang announced that the Super Duper Graphics Pack teased at E3 2017 “proved too technically demanding to implement as planned.” The Super Duper Graphics Pack was supposed to introduce “excessive visual razzmatazz” to the cross-platform version of the game, including 4K resolution support, HDR visuals, dynamic shadows, directional lighting, edge highlighting, improved water effects, and more.
“We aren’t happy with how the pack performed across devices,” Mojang’s announcement says. “For this reason, we’re stopping development on the pack, and looking into other ways for you to experience Minecraft with a new look.”
That last line still gives hope for a future where Minecraft’s blocks look slightly shinier. Of course, PC gamers with the O.G. Java Edition of Minecraft and a hunger for eye candy don’t need to wait for Mojang to figure out how to optimize performance on phones and consoles with ancient CPUs, thanks to the power of mods. If you want to give modding a shot, check out PCGamesN’s list of glorious visual overhauls, while PC Gamer maintains a killer roundup of Minecraft mods that extend beyond mere graphical tweaks if you want to really get wild.
James Charles is returning to Minecraft Monday after taking last week off.
The event hosted by UMG and Keemstar continues for Monday, August 12th with its eighth week of the tournament. For this week, the competitors will compete in Hunger Games (Spark City), TnT Run, Hunger Games (Breezy), Hunger Games (Par72), KitPVP, Hunger Games (Holiday), Hunger Games (Wyvern), Bingo, and Hunger Games (Spark Apokalypse).
Minecraft Monday has switched between all Hunger Games contests and several other mini games. For this week it looks like it will mostly be Hunger Games (Battle Royale) events.
ShotGunPlays & Technoblade won Week 1, Technoblade & iBallisticSquid won Week 2, traves & cscoop won Week 3, Vikkstar123 & Preston won Week 4, Skeppy & BadBoyHalo won Week 5, Technoblade & Schlatt won in Week 6 and Badboyhalo & Skeppy won in Week 7.
When does Minecraft Monday start?
Date: August 12th
Time: 4 p.m. EST, 1 p.m. PT
How to stream Minecraft Monday Week 8
UMG will be streaming the event live above.
You can also watch live from individual streamers on their respective platforms (some stream on Twitch, others stream on YouTube, a rare few choose other outlets).
Minecraft Monday Week 8 teams, rosters
Minecraft Monday Week 8 results
The leaderboard above will update throughout the tournament, and you can check at the end of the event who won.
After announcing a plan to completely overhaul Minecraft‘s visual engine in 2017, the game's developers at Mojang have finally come clean: the “Super Duper Graphics Pack” is no longer coming to the hugely popular sandbox game.
The update's E3 2017 announcement sent tongues wagging thanks to an incredible trailer, which bathed the game's familiar, blocky environs with a newly dynamic shadow-and-light model, crepuscular rays, screen-space reflections, material-based lighting, and more. Keeping in line with its description as a “pack,” the update left the game's raw assets untouched, which made it seem similar to other existing “texture packs” sold within modern Minecraft games. All of this would even run in 4K resolution on supported hardware, Mojang said, and it promised a free launch by “fall 2017.”
Once that date slipped, Mojang became wholly mum about the pack's existence until Monday. That's when Mojang confirmed the project's cancellation in a brief, official blog post. In it, the company told fans, “Unfortunately, the pack proved too technically demanding to implement as planned.” Instead of offering technical details, Mojang went on to blame the update's problems on “how the pack performed across devices.”
Thanks to this brief statement, we're forced to read between the lines and remember that the Super Duper Graphics Pack was originally announced as a free update for Minecraft on Windows 10 and Xbox as opposed to power-starved platforms such as Nintendo Switch or smartphones. And we learned in December 2018 that Microsoft was officially done supporting the game on Xbox 360 consoles. This may very well have been a crucial brick to lay in moving forward on “Xbox One-only” console support for the pack.
So that “across devices” line may very well point to the non-X version of Xbox One as a performance sticking point. But neither Mojang nor Microsoft is saying.
Shortly after the pack's 2017 announcement, Microsoft rolled out a Minecraft “beta test” channel via the Xbox One Insider channel. But that test version of the game never included any hints of Super Duper Graphics Pack bonuses or even a jump to 4K resolution. However, that doesn't mean Microsoft is done pushing Minecraft‘s limits on its existing platforms. The Monday blog post included a tease of some technical upgrade possibly coming: “We're constantly trying to make the most of the technical architecture of each [platform]. We'll be able to share more on that subject very soon.”
And in good news, some of the Super Duper update's graphical touches appear to have found a home in the promising spin-off game Minecraft Dungeons, slated to launch sometime next year.
