Minecraft is getting even more interactive thanks to a new tool from Mixer.
The Microsoft-owned streaming platform today announced new features that let people watching Minecraft streams interact with the gameplay in real-time.
Minecraft streamers can add “Mixer interactivity” to their game and turn any Minecraft command into an interactive button that viewers can use to change the given game. Streamers can set parameters for how much interaction is enabled.
The new feature is available today in the Minecraft beta (1.2.5) and Windows 10, with Xbox compatibility arriving Tuesday. iOS users will get access once the beta version is cleaned up.
Mixer also announced today that the Minecraft 1.2.5 beta now lets streamers broadcast directly from inside a Minecraft game via Mixer; iOS users will get this capability in the final release.
The acquisitions are part of Microsoft’s strategy to accelerate its gaming business across the company. In a company-wide memo sent in June, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlined five core customer solution areas that he wants employees to prioritize. They include modern workplace; business applications; applications and infrastructure; data and AI; and gaming.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Mixer, originally called Beam, gave Microsoft a rival to YouTube Gaming and Amazon’s Twitch, letting users livestream and watch games and other content. Mixer seeks to differentiate itself with features including low-latency streaming, the ability for up to four broadcasters to stream to a shared chat experience, and ways for viewers to interact with games as they’re streamed.
Another advantage is Mixer’s close ties with Microsoft’s PC and video-game platforms, which is evident from today’s Minecraft announcement.
Minecraft was released digitally for New Nintendo 3DS as a surprise announcement during last month's Nintendo Direct. The New 3DS version of Mojang's popular sandbox game features the Survival and Creative modes, as well as five skin packs, two new texture packs, and more.
Players can use the touch screen to view the map, access their inventory, and craft various items. Additionally, the New 3DS version gives players the option of controlling the game with either touch or traditional button controls.
Waking up in a beautiful forest you find yourself in the midst of an adventure, suddenly having to decide whether to journey into the village or continue exploring through the trees.
Every path begins as such, allowing readers to choose the way the story unfolds — will you craft your own mansion, change forces and become evil or venture into the mysterious village.
Alongside the thrill of your average 9-year-old activities such as soccer and nerf wars, Luke Reynolds has a passion for writing. The fourth grade Unity Christian School student has already accepted awards for his writing abilities, receiving the “scribe” award — given to students for outstanding writing skills, at the end of his third grade year.
“I knew he had talent but was more than impressed when the words and ideas never quit flowing during the writing process” said Luke’s dad Jamie Reynolds. “Ninety percent of the story came straight from Luke’s mind through my fingers to the page.”
Jamie Reynolds teaches English and language arts at an elementary school and over the last two summers the two have combined forces to write an unofficial Minecraft book.
The book, “Griefers, Creepers, and Swords”, consists of 150 pages of freedom that allows readers to form their own paths based in the game Minecraft.
Created in 2009, Minecraft is known as the game of no rules and creativity — allowing players to build and explore however they want with a variety of blocks and survival tactics.
It’s similar to a choose your own adventure book Kimberly Reynolds, Luke’s mother, said. Readers are able to decide their adventure by selecting which path they want to take as they read through the story. At the end of various situations, the reader selects what they want to happen next and the book directs them to the page they need to turn to in order to continue their journey.
While no severe writer’s blocks occurred throughout the writing, the two expressed the challenge of going back to school between the two summers. They encountered a rough time coming back and figuring out where to continue the book.
Luke said he hopes to write at least four more books continuing the pick your own path style. After completing the Minecraft series he hopes to continue writing about games as well as whatever genre he’s into at the time.
Luke and Jamie hope to continue growing their fanbase. Along with their book “Griefers, Creepers, and Swords”, the two have created a website, minecraftbooks.us, involving a blog, exclusive videos, a newsletter and a biography on the two, as well as a youtube gaming channel.
Their youtube channel, Unofficial Minecraft Books: Pick Your Path Series, allows viewers to watch segments of the book writing experience and a tour of Luke’s own Minecraft world.
Readers and minecraft enthusiasts can purchase “Griefers, Creepers, and Swords” at the Last Stop Gift Shop inside the Rome-Floyd visitor’s center as well as Amazon. The book can also be purchased at local arts and crafts fairs.
Do you like the Netflix original Stranger Things? In the first season, the show follows a group of children as they try to uncover the mystery behind the disappearances of several friends and members of the community.
It explores concepts like alternative alternative dimensions, and many more sci-fi tropes. Well, the second season is here and it looks like Minecraft is celebrating that with style.
According to Microsoft, creepers won't be the only trouble that Minecraft players will need to look out for because the Stranger Things Skin Pack is here! Join fan-favorites like Eleven, Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Will as they explore the looming dark forces and save Hawkins! You have to survive the terrifying Demogorgon, adolescence, and horrendous 80s fashion choices in pixelated glory.
The Stranger Things Skin Pack is available on upgraded Bedrock Engine platforms through the Minecraft Marketplace for 490 coins. Other platforms are also getting the pack but they have to buy it for $2.99. The Stranger Things Skin Pack is definitely a great, spooky addition to Minecraft. However, keep in mind that Minecraft's Halloween Spooktacular is taking place right now until October 31, 2017 so be sure to join a server and participate in the festivities.
Be sure to check out Minecraft at retailers if you haven't already. The game is getting upgraded for Xbox One X so that will be a sight to behold. Additionally, be sure to check out Stranger Things on Netflix by downloading the application on the Microsoft Store.
Minecraft fans now, in theory, never have to stop playing their favourite game thanks to an update that brings it to a variety of platforms, including Xbox One, Android and Windows 10 computers.
The Better Together Update from developer Mojang not only connects more gamers, allowing them to play together, but it also facilitates new usage scenarios, for example the option to start a game on a console and then move onto a smartphone when you leave the house.
The update also brings new features such as playing time on community servers and automatic synchronisation of updates and content across all devices when you're logged in with an Xbox Live account. — dpa
Kinect is dead. The writing has been on the wall for years, at least since Microsoft de-bundled the motion-tracking system from the Xbox One in 2014, knocking $100 off the price tag and making the system more competitive with the PlayStation 4.
The Kinect debuted in 2010 with the Xbox 360, and it had a good run, overall: Microsoft sold roughly 35 million devices in total. However, across its iterations and upgrades, the Kinect never quite found its market — the one application that would turn the hardware into an essential piece of home technology. It wasn't a conversational, connected, voice-activated system like Google Home or Amazon Alexa, and game developers lost interest in the device as virtual and mixed reality rose to the fore. The Kinect was a product out of time.
That's not to say it didn't contribute to some truly wild experiences over the years. Developers quickly applied Kinect to surgery, physical therapy and a range of other medical uses. Three years after its debut, the Kinect was able to read sign language. Musicians flocked to the technology, applying it to live shows and videos. And then there were the games: Fantasia: Music Evolved, D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die and Fru were brilliant examples of the breadth of experience possible via Kinect's gesture-tracking interface. Even Kinect Sports Rivals, for all of its flaws, laid the groundwork for local multiplayer in motion-controlled gaming.
Below, we've collected a handful of trippy, strange and downright cool Kinect experiments from its seven years on the market. The Kinect is dead; long live Kinect.
The Aquatop projector turned a bathtub into a touchscreen surface, powered by bath salts and Kinect. From researchers at the Koike Laboratory at Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications, Aquatop let people pinch and drag the water to manipulate images and play games — all without the fear of getting a phone or tablet wet.
You could also call this one the “Chewbacca cosplay simulator,” if you're feeling saucy. New York-based artist Daniel Rozin created a “mirror” out of nearly 1,000 black and white pom-poms, using the Kinect to track people's movements and power 464 servos to respond in kind. This is the artistic side of Kinect — something ridiculous, thought-provoking and completely impractical.
Once upon a time, the New York Hall of Science hosted a sprawling, interactive forest designed to help kids better understand the core tenets of sustainability. Connected Worlds featured six different digital biomes, including a 40-foot waterfall and movable “logs” lying about the play space. It took a dozen Kinect cameras, dangling in midair, to make the whole thing possible.
Old, meet new. Composer Chris Vik added Kinect to a huge 83-year-old pipe organ in Melbourne, Australia, and he was able to play it with gestures alone. The Town Hall organ had been retrofitted to accept MIDI input in the 1990s, so Vik wrote some code, hooked up a Kinect, and voilà.
In July, scientists at the Field Museum of Natural History had a problem: They needed to scan the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex, but their equipment wouldn't fit around the beast's massive jaw. Enter: Kinect. Researchers were able to scan the entire five-foot fossil and investigate a series of holes in its jaw, all for thousands of dollars less than using traditional scanning systems.
Nine Inch Nails' frontman, Trent Reznor, and art director Rob Sheridan are pretty big nerds, and they took the Kinect under their wings on a festival tour in 2013. During his set, the Kinect tracked Reznor's movements and projected them onto a series of mobile screens as a distorted kind of mirror. We talked with Sheridan this week about the death of the Kinect; read his thoughts right here.
Self-taught South Korean programmer Jae Kwan Ko took the Kinect to a new level of militaristic might, applying the hardware to the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea. The Kinect system monitored the border for movement, and it was even able to discern the difference between animals and humans.
RoomAlive was an internal project from Microsoft that represented the dreams of gaming and sci-fi fans worldwide. It essentially turned a living room into a Star Trek-style holodeck, projecting interactive objects and environments on the walls and floors. RoomAlive never made it to the stage where it was ready for consumer consumption, but the fact that this type of technology existed — in 2014, even — was incredibly exciting.
