I never got around to playing Minecraft when it was released on PC last year. This was admittedly mainly due to the fact that my now eight year old computer would start crying uncontrollably whenever I proposed a trip to the third dimension, but truth be told, I also had my own reservations about the block building behemoth. In the past I've steered clear of time sink video games like World Of Warcraft and EVE online, not because I suspect that they're bad games, but because I know I'm very susceptible to that drip feed style of design - play for an hour, acquire a sexy new item, play for another hour.... oh s**t, it's morning and my heart has stopped working. Minecraft seemed to take this idea to the next level, at any moment in time you could be standing over a literal gold mine; all you had to do was dig downwards....
But needless to say, my curiosity won over me in the end and I decided to give the newly released Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition a whirl to see what I was missing. Unlike the PC original, the 360 edition comes with a rather sexy tutorial mode which allows Minecraft virgins the space to get to grips with the complex mechanics before sending them out into the big, bad world. Being a real man, I decided to pass on this mode and brave the wilds of the single player mode uneducated. After setting the difficulty to maximum, I dove headfirst into my own personal randomly generated world wherein I was immediately murdered by a giant spider. I laughed it off, just an unlucky spawn point; let's see where it spawns me ne..... The f*** is this?! It just keeps spawning me next to the giant spider! Is this the game? Did I just buy Die By Spider: The Video Game?
I can admit when I've been beaten. I exited out of my own personal hell and headed on down to tutorial town. There were no giant spiders waiting for me here, no judging eyes peering out from behind the trees, this was a world steeped in serenity. 'Gather materials and build a house', a tutorial window exclaimed playfully. I was only too happy to oblige. Following my unseen friend's advice, I started towards the nearest tree and tore it down with my bare hands (real man) to collect some wood. With the wood I crafted some planks, with the planks I crafted a workbench which opened up a tremendous amount of new options. From this point you can progress however you see fit, make yourself a wooden pickaxe and you can mine rock to further expand your crafting capabilities or should you desire it, build yourself a shack and live out your days watching cows from afar.
Now, armed with knowledge, I decided to take another stab at the single player. There were no spiders nibbling at my shins this time – luck was on my side. As I mentioned before, each time you start a new game in Minecraft, a map is randomly generated, so your world is exclusive to you. I simply cannot overstate just how pivotal this feature is to Minecraft's success as a game. Each time you start a new game you are starting a whole new adventure in an uncharted world full of spooky caves ripe for exploring and tall, snowy mountains that scream "Build a pair of square breasts on me." I didn’t hesitate in getting to work on my scale replica of the meth lab from Breaking Bad but after a few hours, I realised that wood simply would not suffice… It was time to mine.
In Minecraft, you spend as much time below ground as you do above, blindly digging downwards in search of gold, diamonds and other commodities. This may not sound very exciting to some, but I personally found Minecraft to be at it's most interesting below the soil line. Stumbling upon an underground cavern overflowing with lava never ceases to thrill simply because neither you nor anyone else had any reason to believe it would be there, it's genuine discovery. There is an ultimate goal in the game which involves building a portal to another world from rare materials found underground, but I failed to find any such materials on any of my expeditions.
Occasionally while poking around beneath Mother Earth’s undergarments, you will happen upon some of Minecraft’s more unfriendly residents. These come in the form of the aforementioned spiders, zombies, archer skeletons and f***in’ badass cactus dudes that get so excited when they see you that they explode. If you feel like a little combat is in order then you can craft yourself a sword and armor set and take the fight underground, just don’t expect to enjoy the combat cos it’s s**t.
Admittedly, the game can feel pretty aimless at times. After completing my meth lab, I moved onto the standard moat, bridge and castle that plague the online servers. You see the 360 edition, while still very enjoyable, is quite a ways behind the current pc version and so is lacking in many of the features that fans have become accustomed to, most notably ‘Create Mode’, a sandbox mode which gives players unlimited materials plus the ability to fly. We’ve all seen the Minecraft videos on Youtube showing off the awe inspiring gargantuan structures erected by some of the more, let’s say ‘dedicated’ fans, but these structures are simply not possible on the 360 - at least not until a Create Mode is added through updates.
One advantage 360 users have over pc though, is the ability to play the game split screen with up to four pals. There is a huge amount of fun to be had running amuck with your buddies, especially if said buddies are already familiar with the game – heck, you’ll be building castles, moats and bridges in half the time! Now I know what you’re thinking, “Hey PhantomTommy, what do I do if my three best friends have been arrested on drug charges?” Well shut your face pal because you can play this s**t on the internet too and finding a game is easy as selecting play online from the game’s menu screen.
Overall, Mincraft: Xbox 360 Edition is a fun little game, but one that leaves the player wanting more. It will eventually reach it’s full potential at which point we may be looking at one of the best games to ever grace the XBLA, but until then we will just have to make do with bridges… and the occasional castle.
In honour of PlayStation's 30th birthday yesterday in the US, data company Circana has dug out figures showing the top 20 best-selling PlayStation video games ever (date-range Jan 1995 to July 2025). Don't get too excited.
This is a great reminder of how game sales have become more concentrated in a smaller number of games/series over time. In the PS1/PS2 era a game was a success if it sold a million or a few million copies. The GTA games (3/Vice City/San Andreas) were pretty big outliers in selling as much as they did during the PS2 era. So in the minds of a lot of gamers something like FF VII feels like it was as big of a PS1 game as God of War 2018 was for PS4, but in reality far fewer people bought it (though it has obviously reached additional people through remasters, etc.).
What this says to me is, not many people are buying a PS to play PS exclusives. Like so many false narratives, like Xbox gamers don't buy games! It seems Playstation as a default system is a vanilla system to play call of duty, Minecraft, GTA games and a sports games.
if you look back into the PS history, it has always been the 3rd parties who sells the most games. it was just that the PS1 and PS2 were so dominant that many of those 3rd party games were exclusives. so, back during the PS1 and PS2 days, the strategy was "to sell as many consoles as possible in order to sell more 1st party exclusives" to ride on that wave. The strategy to push many 1st party exclusives to sell consoles only started with the PS3 when many of those prior 3rd party exclusives went multiplat but more accurately, it started with the PSP.
Sony saw with the PSP, which was being trounced in sales by the DS, that 3rd party exclusives are hard to come by if you're not dominating the market. So they started building more 1st party games and when the PS3 were facing difficulties in sales, they knew they had to rely on their own to differentiate the PS3 from the 360. So the strategy back then changed to "release more 1st party exclusives in order to sell more consoles".
the only manufacturer that is still consistently selling their hardware to play 1st party exclusives, is Nintendo, and that was because they gave up the armrace for power thus they can't rely on 3rd parties anymore as all multiplats play better on competing consoles. AND that's also why they are the most ominous in going after emulators and also patent trolling!
so, you're not wrong there, but not an "aha!" moment or anything. it has been this way since the last, at least, 15 years for Playstation.
@zerobalance
So... what this tells you is that Call of duty, being the absolute check writer that it is, has been outsold by Last of us, God of war, 2 Spider man games..... Saying Playstation exclusives doesn't sell is like saying call of duty doesn't sell because they have outsold some of iterations. Does that make sense to you?
Minecraft's latest licensed DLC crossover has arrived.
Minecraft's latest snapshot has added some changes to projectiles, which could be creating the groundwork for a bigger combat update.
Nice review, I enjoyed reading it.