Gaming News

Phew! What a week. E3’s finally over! Jetlagged developers and giddy gamers the world over can finally slump back into their chairs in happy exhaustion, satisfied in the knowledge that a year of amazing digital diversion lies ahead.What’s that? You missed the entire thing? Dear oh dear. Well, luckily for you, we’ve collated all the most important news (which is to say Minecraft news) and put it in this post.Here’s the full video of Microsoft’s conference. There’s lots of cool stuff in there - a new, slim version of the Xbox One; customisable game pads; high seas hijinks in Sea of Thieves and highway hijinks in Forza Horizons 3; Gwent, Recore and much more. But if you want to cut to the ‘crafting, watch the edit below:Doesn’t...

Somewhere out there, on a hot stage in LA, Lydia has just announced the release of The Friendly Update, aka 0.15, for Pocket and Windows 10 Edition. And not just that! We can now reveal that The Friendly Update’s hitherto mysteriously unspecified friendliness is a result of two major features: Realms and cross-device multiplayer!Realms are servers, run by us, just for you and your friends. Now, you can keep your Pocket / Win 10 Edition Minecraft world online and always accessible, even when you log-off. It’s safe, too! Only people you invite can join your world, and what you do there is up to you: create, survive or compete.Not convinced? Then try out the month-long free trial! Read all about how to get your hands on Realms on our...

Hello!You might remember us posting about Minecraft: Education Edition back in January. It’s a version of Minecraft designed to help educators teach all kinds of subjects.Now the time has finally come. If you’re blessed with a particularly hip and likeable teacher, Minecraft: Education Edition could soon be appearing in a class near you soon! The early access version is available for download!You might be surprised to know that Education Edition features some interesting bits and pieces that you can’t find in other versions of Minecraft. Aside from the tools necessary to get students working together, it features a snazzy camera and compatible portfolio, non-player characters that can be programmed to teach stuff, and even...

What comes after 9? Well surprise, surprise: we’ve updated Minecraft to version 1.10! Get it hot off the stove in the Minecraft launcher.The update contains changes for both the coldest and hottest areas of the Minecraft world. Polar bears roam the frozen plains, and a stronger kind of zombie may approach you in the deserts. There are also other additions you may find pleasant.For instance, the update includes the second “technical block” after Command Blocks: the Structure Block. This block allows map makers to store templates of structures and place them dynamically with the help of Redstone trickery. Since it’s a technical block, you will not find it in the game menus, and is restricted to players who are admins in creative...

The second pre-release for Minecraft 1.10 fixes some more issues that were reported to us via the bugtracker. Thanks to everyone who found and reported bugs.Reporting bugs on our bugtracker is the best way to tell us about things that are horribly broken or even crash your game. Please make sure the issue is not already reported before posting a new ticket.The bug tracker has a “search” function that will help you to figure out if there’s already a ticket about the problem you want to report.Notable changes:Fixed more bugs Added missing soundsBugs fixed in 1.10-pre2:[Bug MC-94576] - (Player) Head in inventory causes buggy rendering of certain inventory slots, potion effect display and attack cooldown [Bug MC-94896] - Tab...

What’s coming in The Friendly Update - the much anticipated 0.15 update for Pocket / Windows 10 Edition? Crazy piston-powered contraptions aplenty! Watch the video above to see some of the redstone features coming soon to a pocket near you. Preferably your own pocket.The video was made for us by the talented folk over at Blockworks with music by TheMusicalKnight - which is, of course, played entirely in-game by the insane contraption they’ve built. When the 0.15 update launches, you’ll be able to download this machine for yourself by using this link.And pistons are far from the only thing to be included in the update. Have a look at the massive changelist we posted. There’s pig-riding, a fancy new Observer block (which works like a...

Who’s excited about 0.15, then? Judging by Shoghi’s inundated Twitter feed, quite a lot of you. We aren’t quite ready to tell you when it’ll launch, but we can tell you a few of the things you might find in it. We’ll be releasing an Android beta soon, so you’ll be able to explore some of the new features for yourselves.Here’s some - but definitely not all - of what you’ll find in 0.15, aka The Friendly Update.New FeaturesMysterious, as-yet-unspecified friendliness Pistons and sticky pistons! Observer blocks: new blocks that can detect changes in neighboring blocks Xbox Live Achievements on iOS and Android Online multiplayer with Xbox Live friends! Leads, horses and dyeable horse armor! Fire charges Pig riding! A whole new UI for...

It is time. Here is this weeks snapshot the first Minecraft 1.10 pre-release. We will decide when the final Minecraft 1.10 update will be released based on the feedback we get and the reported issues on our bugtracker.Reporting bugs on our bugtracker is the best way to tell us about things that are horribly broken or even crash your game. Please make sure the issue is not already reported before posting a new ticket.The bug tracker has a “search” function that will help you to figure out if there’s already a ticket about the problem you want to report.Notable changes:Bugs fixed in 1.10-pre1:[Bug MC-3437] - Flowers/tall grass being placed on top of Gravel by the World Generator [Bug MC-90659] - Mobs that are on fire will not...

After a certain number of sales it’s only appropriate that an infographic be made, and said infographic shared for players, parents, and games journalists. So feast your eyes upon the two images displayed in this post!We’d like to offer our heartfelt thanks to every one of you who’s bought Minecraft over the past few years, no matter which platform you play on. We’re constantly in awe of our community and the amazing things you achieve together. You really are the best. <3Feel free to share this thing with friends, family, and the internet. We’ve prepared a high resolution version for that very reason. Download it at the following link.AMAZINGMINECRAFTSTATSGONEWRONGYOUWONTBELIEVEWHATHAPPENNEXTCOMPILATION2016.jpgHave a great...

Next Tuesday, be prepared to launch yourself through “A Portal to Mystery”, the first of three new Story Mode episodes. The political chaos of Sky City is behind them, but Jesse and crew may be leaping out of the frying (and possibly flying) pan and into the fire.Fresh perils await them in an unfamiliar land, as does the sinister figure known as The Host. What can this pumpkin-headed hostelier have in mind for his new guests? Who are the strangers invited to attend The Host’s mansion party?! Can anyone be trusted?!! Who will survive?!!! Will Owen tell me off for using excessive punctuation?!!!! Who knows?!!!!!Portal into Mystery will be available to download on PC / Mac, Windows 10, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3...

Hello!We’re adding a new section to our Commercial Usage Guidelines. It relates to promotions within Minecraft, and will mostly affect advertising agencies and corporations.Considering it’s such a hot topic right now, it’s worth mentioning that these changes won’t affect the usual server and video monetisation. This is a completely unrelated thing.Anyway, back on topic: the number of Minecraft players has grown massively over the past few years. In fact, it’s now so big that Minecraft has become a viable place for companies to advertise unrelated products or for organizations to promote their causes.We want to empower our community to make money from their creativity, but we’re not happy when the selling of an unrelated product...

Ready your enchanted rods! Strap on your diamond helms! We’ve been working with our chums at 4J Studios to make something pretty special - and free! - for Console Edition players to enjoy. We’re calling it Battle. It’s a last-minecrafter-standing deathmatch and the first of a number of mini games we’ll be releasing, designed to help players compete under cool and crazy rulesets with minimum fuss.Of course, our amazingly creative console community already improvises new (and often very weird) ways to play with friends - and long may this continue! Our mini games will give you a helping hand, dropping you straight into the fun without the need to mess around with manual countdowns, laboriously prep loot chests or keep score.Battle...

Last week the polar bears were released into the world. This week they can enjoy their peaceful life in a world with less bugs.Some of the changes and new features are not 100% finalized and we are going to improve and balance them in the upcoming snapshots.Most noticeable is the lack of sound effects for some of the new things in the game. There is no need to report them as bugs as we are fully aware of the issue and our sound magicians are already working on it.Reporting bugs on our bugtracker is the best way to tell us about things that are horribly broken or even crash your game. Please make sure the issue is not already reported before posting a new ticket.The bug tracker has a “search” function that will help you to...

Hello!Today we’re proud to announce an exclusive agreement to license our Pocket and PC editions of Minecraft to a NetEase, Inc. affiliate in mainland China. The plan is to develop a version of Minecraft tailored for the Chinese market. It probably won’t affect most of you, seeing as you’re probably not based in China.But still, this is significant news and significant news requires significant quotes, so here are two. One from our CEO, and one from NetEase’s.“We’ll always embrace opportunities to bring Minecraft to new players around the world, widening our community, and giving us a new perspective on our game,” said Jonas Martensson, CEO of Mojang, creators of Minecraft. “NetEase understand our long-term vision for Minecraft...

Are you the kind of adventurer who happily weathers the Nether? Or have you made room for yourself among the ‘shrooms? You’re in luck! We have 24 new skins that might suit you rather well, just for Pocket and Win 10 players.This is the second Biome Settlers pack we’ve released - the first featured skins themed around the Forest, Tundra, and Desert biomes, and all the activities players get up to there. This time we wanted to make skins for the hardy (and rather peculiar) folk who’ve made the Nether their home, cultivating Nether wart crops or collecting Ghast tears, and those who forage for fungal treats in the Mushroom Island biome. Some are brewers, others are explorers, engineers, brawlers and archers. A few may have been so...

Do you have an awesome idea for a panel you’d like to present at MINECON in Anaheim, September 24-25? Or do you want to book a booth to show off your amazing Minecraft-inspired work?You should tell us right now!As always, we’re looking for a variety of speakers, topics and ideas to make MINECON the best event it can be. Previous panels have been about all kinds of things, from buildings maps, running servers and making mods to the art of animation, Minecraft music parodies and using Minecraft in the classroom. A great panel can be about anything as long as it is Minecraft-related and interesting to you and to MINECON’s attendees.To submit a panel you MUST record a video of yourself presenting your idea. It doesn’t have to be...

The polar bears are here.And many more new and exciting features are also included in the first snapshot of Minecraft 1.10.Most of the changes and new features are not 100% finalized and we are going to improve and balance them in the upcoming snapshots. We are looking forward to read about your experiences on Reddit or watch you playing the snapshot on Twitch or Youtube.Reporting bugs on our bugtracker is the best way to tell us about things that are horribly broken or even crash your game. Please make sure the issue is not already reported before posting a new ticket.The bug tracker has a “search” function that will help you to figure out if there’s already a ticket about the problem you want to report.Notable changes...

UPDATE: Amended graphic to read HONG KONG not HONK KONG.Money, eh? When it’s in your pocket it seems constant in value, but when you start comparing it to coins in pockets around the world, it seems to be worth more or less than before.That’s currency in a nutshell. That’s economics. It’s very boring.Anyway, in the spirit of currency exchange, we’re changing the prices of Minecraft in different regions so they align with the United States Dollar. The new prices will take effect on May 23. Please note that this applies to Minecraft for PC (the Java version), and not the Console and Pocket Editions.If you haven’t bought Minecraft yet, it might be worth purchasing in the next week if your pocket money allowance isn’t aligned with...

Eurovision is just around the corner! Literally! 2016’s Eurovision song contest is happening this Saturday in Stockholm, Sweden. That’s where our office is based, in case you didn’t know.That means fun flags on buses, singing tunnels, Swedish celebrities talking in subway stations, a pop-up Eurovision village, and previous winning tunes getting blasted out at pedestrian crossings. All those things are true by the way - Stockholm is hyped about what must be one of the most cheery, joyous competitions of the year.With that in-mind, we’ve laced a bit of that Eurovision magic into Minecraft. We’ve teamed up with FyreUK and SVT (a Swedish TV channel) to build the Eurovision stage in Minecraft for PC (the Java version). The real-life...

Update: Minecraft 1.9.4 removes the incorrect snapshot warning when you load a world from a previous version in Minecraft 1.9.3.This update fixes some reported issues and improves overall performance of the game. We also found some ways to reduce the memory usage, especially on servers.Please report any and all bugs you find in Minecraft to bugs.mojang.com. If nobody reports a bug, we can’t fix it!Notable changes:Improved memory usage of the pathfinder Performance of the chunk cache improved Use less memory for biome caching Several tweaks to the AI Tweaks to the Realms Added /stopsound command Removed herob…. (ok, this is getting old, I know)Report bugs here:Minecraft issue tracker!Continue reading...

Minecraft: Wii U Edition has been available for some time and, though it’s a remarkably good video game, it’s not felt especially Nintendo-ey. That’s about to change!As you can see from the spiffy trailer up there, a free Mario Mash Up pack is on its way to Minecraft: Wii U Edition. It features a Mario-themed world, 16 original super-tunes from Mario 64, a specific Mario-themed texture pack, and a heap of skins featuring your favourite Mario-buddies. In fact, there are over 40 characters to play as. Of course, the two plumber guys and the princesses are included but we’ve even packed in some of the cheekier folk like Kamek, one of the Hammer Bros and that pernicious plant, Petey Pirahna. It’s a delightful mix, all in all.Did I...

Minecraft on Xbox turns four today! To celebrate those four wonderful years we’re going to be giving away a special birthday skinpack for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition and Minecraft: Xbox One Edition.The pack, which features Alex and Steve sporting snazzy mob-themed tees, will be freely available all week long, starting today! And, as if that wasn’t enough, we’re also putting all the previous birthday skin packs up for grabs at the same time, too. So go get ‘em, slip into something suitable for this special occasion, and stuff yourself full of cake!Cheerio!Marsh - @marshdaviesContinue reading...

Hello!You might not know this, but we have some of the hottest data analysts in the world working at Mojang. And they’ve been crunching the numbers. After months of hard graft, they’ve managed to calculate precisely which add-on packs have sold most on the Xbox One console.Armed with this hot data, we’ve decided to bundle the top seven packs with Minecraft: Xbox One Edition and sell the resulting package for $29.99 (or equivalent) in stores across the world. We have named this bundle the “Minecraft: Xbox One Edition Favorites Pack.”The Minecraft: Xbox One Edition Favorites pack will be available in-stores on June 7th in Australia and New Zealand, and on June 21st in the rest of the world. It includes:Minecraft: Xbox One Edition...

Have you heard? We’re working on bringing Realms to Pocket Edition and Windows 10! If you missed that news, you may also have missed that we’ve been running a free alpha to test how Realms works on Android.Well over 700,000 of you signed up to help us kick its tyres since we launched last month. To those people: thank you so much! It’s been incredible to see the enthusiasm and support you’ve shown for the game. You guys are rad.To the people who haven’t yet tried the alpha: it’s okay, we think you’re pretty rad too. But if you want to be even radder, you have until tomorrow to sign up. Then you’ll have the entire weekend to muck around and make awesome stuff before we shut down the alpha on Monday.Get crackin’!Cheerio!Marsh -...

First we assumed one pre-release for Minecraft 1.9.3 would be all we need to ensure a stable update. And then we had to release a second pre-release the next week to fix the remaining issues. And, because the third time’s a charm, here is the third Minecraft 1.9.3 pre-release.If everything works out as planned, we will release the update to Minecraft 1.9.3 early next week. Of course I shouldn’t have mentioned that, because now I’m just asking for something else to come up and delay it.Notable changes:Changed some changes that we made in 1.9.3 pre-release 2 Fixed a potential crash with spreading water or lava Added 0.17% more cowbellPlease report any and all bugs you find in Minecraft to bugs.mojang.com. If nobody reports a...

Hello!We’ve launched the new Minecraft.net! Minecraft.net 2.0, if you will.The new site has all the features you might be used to, but it’s prettier and faster. It also scales better on phones, tablets, and neon-lit-ugly-rigs with their monster monitors. Remember that, like everything Mojang, we’re going to be iterating upon this thing for the foreseeable future.Though we’re very happy to launch Minecraft.net 2.0, it’s worth mentioning that Minecraft.net 3.0 is already in the works! That site will focus on exciting things happening in our community and provide deeper insight into the future of Minecraft and our developers. Our plan is to make Minecraft.net into a place that every player would like to visit once in a while, no...

Get your goggles ready! You can now play Minecraft on Gear VR-compatible Samsung phones - the Galaxy S7 or S7 edge, Note5, S6 and S6 edge. It works by slotting your Samsung phone into the Gear VR headset and displaying one whole Minecraft world to each of your eyes! A marvel of modern science.Our virtual reality edition of Minecraft for the Oculus Rift is still on its way, but to make things simple, we’ve released a separate version on the Oculus Store just for use with the Gear VR. It has all the features of Pocket Edition, costs the same and has cross-platform play with regular Pocket and Windows 10 editions.If you have the Samsung S6 or the snazzy new S7, the screen resolution is pretty fabulous - so you won’t be easily...

Here it is, the second pre-release of Minecraft 1.9.3. The first pre-release last week had some stability issues, but they should now all be solved.Notable changes:The server is now more stable The client is now more stable Introduced a new bug Made sure the new bug “should never happen” Everything is now more stableBugs fixed in 1.9.3-pre2:[Bug MC-87907] - Endermen don’t become aggressive when players look at their head/feet [Bug MC-101150] - Notch skin appear black [Bug MC-101155] - game crashes when opening my redstone world or joining the server [Bug MC-101282] - Crash after playing for 1 or 2 hoursPlease report any and all bugs you find in Minecraft to bugs.mojang.com. If nobody reports a bug, we can’t fix it!To...

We’re here with another batch of hot content for you to play on Realms for PC (we have to say “for PC” now, because we launched this awesome thing recently). Let’s get right to it!We are the Rangers by Dragnoz, Samasaurus6, and BlockworksEvery so often, a Minecraft map comes along and raises the bar for all of the others. The creators of We are the Rangers have created an open world adventure, complete with quests, a fast travel system, and, using resource packs, tons of new animals. Learn about wildlife conservation, bring poachers to justice, and immerse yourself in the sounds of the savanna.G.A.T.O.S. by Team WoolooNo, this map isn’t a Spanish map involving cats (though that sounds like an interesting idea). G.A.T.O.S...

Surprise! We’ve launched a new game on Steam! It’s made entirely by multi-talented Mojangsta, Henrik Pettersson, and you can get it right now for free!It’s Crown and Council, a fast-paced strategy game about conquering land and obliterating rival monarchs. Click adjacent land tiles to subdue them with your army, earning gold to fund further expeditions, defensive forts, naval attacks, universities and more. Muscle your opposition off the map! There can be only one ruler in these lands!It’s simple to play, but not quite so easy to win: do you spend all your cash on universities, hoping to survive long enough that your book-learnin’ makes you unstoppable in the late game? Or do yo go for a quick land-grab, hoping to put enough boots...