Minecraft will be launching on Nintendo Switch come May- and Microsoft kindly shared more details about what people can expect in the newest version of the game. It sounds like unlike the Wii U version, which seemed to be a pretty minimal port, ignoring most of the system’s features, the Switch version will actually leverage the system it is on to some degree.

First- the Switch version’s world sizes will be far beyond the world sizes in the PS Vita, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii U versions of the game. On those platforms, the world’s size was capped at 864×864, while the Switch version goes as high as 3072×3072. This is also smaller than the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, but it is over 13 times as large as the other versions, and it runs at a blistering 60fps- for comparison, the Vita version was sub 30fps.

That’s not all- the Switch version of the game will also support import of worlds made in the Wii U version of the game, although that is a feature that won’t be available right away at launch. At launch the Switch version will be equivalent to the January build of Minecraft– Mojang hopes to get it on par with all the other versions of the game shortly afterwards.

Minecraft on Nintendo Switch will launch in May exclusively on the Nintendo eShop.

[NeoGAF]

It’s been a long time coming – and it’s often been a hilarious road to this, too, given creator Notch’s original public refusal to put Minecraft on Oculus after Oculus were bought out by Facebook, shortly before going and selling Mojang and Minecraft to Microsoft – but we’re finally here now. Minecraft will at last be available in VR, when it launches on Oculus Rift next week.

Microsoft confirmed this in a tweet made by Tommaso Checchi, lead designer on Minecraft‘s smartphone and Windows 10 versions, noting that while VR had originally been teased for a later update, Mojang were now able to move the date ahead to next week.

So, to any and all Oculus owners- Minecraft might literally be the most perfect game for VR. Make sure to get it and give it a go once it is made properly available next week. For owners of other VR headsets, such as Vive, we are sure the game will come to your platform eventually- after all, it is currently already available on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Wii U, PCs runnings Windows and Mac OS, and smartphones and tablets running iOS, Android, FireOS, and Windows.

PSA: unsurprisingly, promised dates change 🙂
We said that Rift support would be in 0.15.6, but it will be out next week instead!

— Tommaso Checchi (@_tomcc) August 11, 2016

Acquiring Mojang and Minecraft two years ago might have been the smartest move they’ve made in a while. Ever since Microsoft bought it, Minecraft has sold 50 million copies across PC, consoles, and other platforms, for a total of over 100 million copies sold worldwide to date- this makes it the highest selling game of all time.

It is unclear, however, if the 100 million number also includes the ‘Pocket Edition’ that is sold on smartphones and tablets, because the press release only mentions ‘other platforms’ after explicitly mentioning PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.

Minecraft is currently available on PCs running Windows and Mac, as well as Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, and smartphones and tablets running iOS, Android, Windows, and Kindle. With 106 million units sold, Minecraft would be the fifth most populous nation in the world if each copy it has sold were a person. You can check out a handy infographic Microsoft and Mojang have sent with the press release below for this, and other cool facts.

Mojang have announced that update 1.9 for Minecraft (seriously, how are they only at 1.9 yet? The game gets updated like once a week, and it’s also nearly five years old) will be launching next week, on February 25. The update is currently in pre-release, meaning if you’re one of the people selected for the privilege, you can already test it out and see what it adds to the game.

Full patch notes will come later, presumably as the update itself launches, but for now, this is all we have. It’s not tok substantial- but then, the actual update and patch notes probably will be:

Notable changes:

• Bugs fixed
• Increased durability of shields
• Some crystals in the end are protected by cages again
• Added 34.7% more hype for Minecraft 1.9

Bugs fixed:

• [Bug MC-96863] – Marker ArmorStand Should Not Have Passenger Offset
• [Bug MC-97217] – Weird placement of player while riding an entity after swimming with elytra
• [Bug MC-97235] – Resource pack in minecraft world save file not working
• [Bug MC-97251] – Rail Duplication Glitch

The addition of 34.7% more hype is probably the most important thing here.

Minecraft is available on literally every single gaming system currently under the sun.

Minecraft is a Microsoft owned property, ever since Microsoft’s buyout of developer Mojang last year, but it’s available on literally everything. I mean it- it’s on PC and Mac, sure, as well as on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, but it’s also on the PS3, PS4, and PS Vita, in addition to Microsoft’s own Xbox 360 and Xbox One (it’s actually the Vita’s highest selling game). And now, it’s hopping on over to Nintendo’s Wii U too.

Speaking about why Microsoft spreads Minecraft as far and wide as they do, Major Nelson told Geekwire that Microsoft views the title as more than a game- it’s a platform unto itself, a playground for this generation of kids.

“[Minecraft] gets this new generation to think analytically. In order to do things, you think okay I want to build X, Y or Z and okay, you have to come up with a plan. Do you have enough resources to build this thing? What’s the design look like? It’s going to make them think more analytically…It’s the new playground where kids are testing social boundaries and are learning social skills inside of the game,” Nelson told GeekWire.

But what about competition? Aren’t Microsoft enabling PlayStation and Nintendo by putting what is their biggest property on those systems? Aren’t they undercutting potential sales they might get if Minecraft was Xbox exclusive?

“Selling units is just one of the many numbers we look at and certainly we want everyone to understand what Xbox can offer…We certainly look at the numbers, that’s how you understand what the competitive landscape is like, but at the end of the day, we know that there are some amazing titles coming out this year. The Xbox One has an incredible portfolio, not to mention the Backwards Compatibility,” Nelson said.

Well… alright then. I’m not complaining, kids love Minecraft, and the easier it is for them to play it, the better.

Achievements and Trophies are now commonplace, but it is easy to forget how new and fresh the concept of a universal and persistent progress tracker for games tied to your online presence was back in 2005, when the Xbox 360 first launched. That gave Xbox a hell of a head start on the concept- universal Trophies weren’t a thing on PSN until 2008, and are still not a thing on Steam or Nintendo.

So it should come as no surprise that there are now over 100,000 Achievements on Xbox Live- these are spread across Xbox 360 and Xbox One games (as well as Games for Windows Live, Windows Phone, Windows 8, and Windows 10), both retail and Xbox Live. 3100 titles have now launched with achievements, with a total of 2,300,227 Gamerscore spread between them. That’s a lot of Gamerscore points, guys.

Achievements are still a thing on Xbox One, though they have evolved far past their initial conception on Xbox One- the 1000G limit for games no longer seems to apply, and Achievements, as well as their associated rewards, are more sophisticated now.

It was a genius, progressive move by Microsoft- which is the reason it became an industry standard like it did.

Source

Being unemployed sucks. Seriously. It’s one of the worst things in the world, which is why writing up news like this makes me very sad. Unfortunately, it is what has happened- Microsoft has announced a major round of layoffs, in which it will be getting rid of as many as 7,800 people from its workforce around the world. The job cuts represent about 6% of the total work force of the company, and will be targeted mainly at the hardware division, specifically mobiles, as Microsoft re-aligns its strategy.

“We are moving from a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem including our first-party device family,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said. “In the near-term, we’ll run a more effective and focused phone portfolio while retaining capability for long-term reinvention in mobility.”

“As a result, the company will record an impairment charge of approximately $7.6 billion related to assets associated with the acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services (NDS) business in addition to a restructuring charge of approximately $750 million to $850 million.”

Microsoft’s phone strategy has consistently been scattershot, from branding errors to mismanagement of OEM partners, from userbase fragmentation to a lack of focus on the smartphone market. The upcoming Windows 10 aims to change all of that, although whether that actually happens this time is anybody’s guess.

A big problem in the modern technology space is computing, gaming and programming for separate devices whilst trying to maintain some form of working cohesion. Currently, and more often than not, devices all carried their own unique API that lets it do whatever it was designed to do, but this led to problems when it came to cross device interaction.

Microsoft are aiming to change this with a Universal Windows Platform that will ensure all API are universal, allowing for cross device and platform functionality. Whereas the Xbox One, Windows Phone and Windows OS all have their own API, the goal is to boil this down into one, jack of all trades API. Basically, if it works on one device, it will work on them all.

Microsoft Universal Windows Platform Program Managers Brent Rector and Peter Torr have said that it should be, “One core platform” that supports all devices if they can fully realize something that can be considered, “truly a single code base”.

Source: Build 2015.

Microsoft’s financial report for the previous quarter is now out, and… it’s not exactly good news, really.

Xbox is doing okay overall, with 1.6 million units shipped over the three months covered in this period. That number might seem to be low, but it’s lower still- it combines the sales of Xbox 360 and Xbox One. This probably means that, realistically speaking, neither console sold a million units worldwide in this period, which is shockingly poor performance.

“Xbox Platform revenue decreased $306 million or 24%, driven by a 20% decline in console volume and lower prices of Xbox One consoles compared to the prior year. We sold 1.6 million Xbox consoles during the third quarter of fiscal year 2015 compared with 2.0 million consoles during the third quarter of fiscal year 2014,” Microsoft said.

It wasn’t all bad news, however- while the Xbox may be struggling, the Surface line of tablets is finally a hit, thanks to the Surface Pro 3 consistently posting strong numbers. With the recent announcement of the Surface 3, and the strong word of mouth that it is generating, Microsoft should see its performance in that segment of the market go only up.

However, from a gaming perspective, it’s hard to deny that as of right now, they are in a very bad place. Even considering the best case scenario – all consoles sold were Xbox One units – and adding it to Microsoft’s 10 million shipped announcement from last December only brings the Xbox One’s lifetime shipments at 11.6 million units. That is still nowhere close to the 20 million sold that the PS4 had managed as of more than a month ago.

Hopefully, Microsoft is able to turn the tide on this console around, and turn it around soon.

Windows 10 is almost here, and a leaked build of the upcoming OS shows us that it will have a full fledged Xbox app integrated with the OS, which sounds awesome.

Now whether this app is basically a PC equivalent of the Xbox SmartGlass, or Microsoft’s answer to Remote Play, by letting players play their Xbox One games on the PC over the Xbox One app, or something that basically lets players play their Xbox One games on their PC natively (that last one will definitely not happen) is unknown, but still, to see it featured so prominently in the OS is pretty damn good.

The OS will also feature Cortana integration, it has been confirmed. Cortana is of course the virtual voice assistant that Microsoft developed for Windows Phone, named after the AI in the Halo series; unlike Siri, she is actually useful, and unlike Google Now, interactive and fun, so it makes sense for Microsoft to flaunt her in what might be their biggest product for years going forward.