Notch Reveals Who's Porting Minecraft to Xbox 360

As Markus "Notch" Persson progresses towards Minecraft's official launch this November, the Minecraft world continues to expand, long before its "release date" on the PC--if you can call it that. Microsoft announced a Kinect-enabled Minecraft was coming to Xbox 360 at E3, but little else.

Persson revealed a little more about plans for the Xbox 360 version on Twitter last night, announcing that 4J Studios was the company behind it. 4J Studios has an established relationship with Microsoft, responsible for porting Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie to Xbox Live Arcade. They also helped in porting The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to PlayStation 3.

"They seem to have a very good mentality, and obviously are very talented," said Persson.

Minecraft is also coming to mobile platforms this year, though Persson hired someone in-house to work on that project. It's first arriving on Android (specifically, Sony's Xperia Play), but will also come to iOS devices down the line. All of this, of course, comes as Minecraft begins adding more game-like elements into its design structure, in anticipation of moving from an beta to final.

Guess that's another Notch in his belt.

@SBYM said:

Guess that's another Notch in his belt.

That's it. No one else needs to comment. Move along now.

D:

So the game wont run like dogshit, great!

Oh, those guys that port games all the time, sounds great!

@SBYM said:

Guess that's another Notch in his belt.

ZING!

Those were all solid port jobs, looks like it's in the right hands.

Gonna be weird playing such a polish-less and glitchy on an xbox though.

@SBYM said:

Guess that's another Notch in his belt.

That's it. No one else needs to comment. Move along now.

Do you think that when this comes to PS3 it will have move support?

I just love that it's a Dundee studio. Scotland's game studios haven't had much luck of late, and this is just fantastic news.

I wanna play... just not with Kinect. 
I hope "Kinect enabled" doesn't mean "requires Kinect".

As a PC gamer doing an "outside looking in" thing here, I really wonder how they will handle the open nature of this game on a closed system like the Xbox 360.  It will really be interesting to see how it works out.

@StingingVelvet: will be especially interesting to see how they handle the many updates since Microsoft seems pretty strict on it's update certification.

@ImperiousRixsaid:

I wanna play... just not with Kinect. I hope "Kinect enabled" doesn't mean "requires Kinect".

They have said it doesn't require Kinect, it's optional.

@Sitoxity said:

I just love that it's a Dundee studio. Scotland's game studios haven't had much luck of late, and this is just fantastic news.

Yeah, good to see at least one Scottish based developer doing well. These guys did fantastic work on the Banjo and Perfect Dark games too.

An beta

@WinterSnowblind said:

@Sitoxity said:

I just love that it's a Dundee studio. Scotland's game studios haven't had much luck of late, and this is just fantastic news.

Yeah, good to see at least one Scottish based developer doing well. These guys did fantastic work on the Banjo and Perfect Dark games too.

Well there is the small time developer that goes by the name of Rockstar North but they haven't sold much since the Lemmings days.

@damswedon: I did say Dundee, and Rockstar North continuing to do well doesn't exactly stop people like Realtime Worlds shutting down and Denki having trouble too.

@Sitoxity: Bah. Forgot quoting one person sends pm's to them all.

OMG I AM FROM DUNDEE! :P
 
Yeah it's nice to see success anywhere :D

@damswedon: My bad. Read it strangely. :P

@damswedon said:

@WinterSnowblind said:

@Sitoxity said:

I just love that it's a Dundee studio. Scotland's game studios haven't had much luck of late, and this is just fantastic news.

Yeah, good to see at least one Scottish based developer doing well. These guys did fantastic work on the Banjo and Perfect Dark games too.

Well there is the small time developer that goes by the name of Rockstar North but they haven't sold much since the Lemmings days.

Oh yeah, didn't they do something with cars at some point?

I actually thought they were based in America these days, but seems they're still in Edinburgh, so I take that back. But yeah, was referring more to the mess in Dundee with Realtime Worlds shutting down. Though they made a very poor decision by deciding to work on that doomed MMO, rather than just developing a sequel to Crackdown.

@WinterSnowblind: I think it was more Microsoft's decision to continue Crackdown with Ruffian (who happen to be in Dundee with a lot of previous RTW staff) but APB wasn't the only thing they were working on when they went bust. They just had no luck, really.

And heres me hoping it would be Gameloft. 

Hurry up 1.7, I want pistons ^_^

So are  they porting the Java run time environment to Xbox 360? That's really the only way I could see this happening and if that's the case I'll bet the Kinect implementation will be downright abysmal.

@SBYM: lol

I thought the Banjo ports were really well done. This bodes well for the XBLA Minecraft.

@SBYM said:

Guess that's another Notch in his belt.

That's it. No one else needs to comment. Move along now.

@SBYM said:

Guess that's another Notch in his belt.

Please send me your address so I can award you with this prize of the entire Internets.

Good to see Dundee studios doing well, they did a great job with the N64 ports. It broke my heart to see Realtime Worlds close, I walked past their offices every day to Uni.

i hope Nolan North is voicing the zombies in the game

I wonder how this will work out on the 360, especially now when the modding API will be added (in a small scale) in 1.7

Having things like the "Better Than Wolves" mod adds a lot to the game already, and I don't think I could ever play Minecraft without mods again. Just as I could never go back to Oblivion on 360 after I had played it with mods on PC.

Maybe some work will actually be done on it now YEAH I WENT THERE

i hope Nolan North is voicing the zombies in the game

Still not sure if I wanna play this game using Kinect...we'll see.

@patrickklepek said"

in anticipation of moving from an beta to final.

"an beta".

id like to see minecraft become a game instead of an overhyped map editor

So are  they porting the Java run time environment to Xbox 360? That's really the only way I could see this happening and if that's the case I'll bet the Kinect implementation will be downright abysmal.

I'm still waiting for the inevitable adventure mode.

Those are all great ports, especially Perfect Dark XBLA /captain obvious

So many questions. Multiplayer? Mod support?

Hard to believe how mainstream Minecraft has become, and it's still seriously underrepresented by Rule 34.

id like to see minecraft become a game instead of an overhyped map editor