Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Reasons to Own an Xperia Play: +1 (Kind of.)



So it was announced today that the Mobile version of Minecraft, previously announced in vague terms, such as a release date of "Sometime", followed by "Sometime in 2011" just got a little, tiny-bit more defined; this time as "Sometime in 2011, on the Xperia Play.  Then another sometime in 2011 for other mobile devices." in fewer words, likely.  While a bit weird to think of it on a couple levels, it does eventually work out for everybody, as mapping it to the controller-like....controls of the Xperia Play may just open the door for console versions at some point.....or perhaps a version styled after a similar handheld device with a similar control scheme that may or may not be codenamed NGP.

I am a very hopeful person, I understand.  It is quite possible that I've already started thinking of just how it would be custom-mapped to the NGP's controls, like swiping the back panel to place a block, or assigning general commands to general buttons - inventory to start, hot-bar navigation to L and R, looking around to the wonderful new right stick with movement to the left, X to jump, Square to punch, Circle to activate an item....etc., etc.

This is....this is all hypothetical, of course.  I haven't been thinking about this at all.  Assuredly.  Just, uh....just trust me on that.


Anyways, the point is, early access and a possibly better overall mobile experience, considering the controls, of Minecraft Mobile was announced, and that's pretty cool.  Now they just need a few more dozen good reasons to convince anyone to own an Xperia Play.

(Also, this is a little side-note, but some of you may notice the timestamp of this article and go, "Hey, I was around at 11:30 PM EST, and this wasn't up!" and that's because blogger went down and wouldn't let me sign in.  I'll be damned if I let that interrupt my daily flow now that I know how to Time Travel.  Of course, I will only use this power when it's Blogger getting in my way, not the weather.)

 Update!:  A few details have come out for Minecraft Mobile (my name), including the tentative(?) title of "Pocket Edition" for reasons that are no doubt immediately obvious.  So far as we can tell, the game is multi-player ready, but only in short-ranges, and there's not the actual single-player portion of Minecraft; merely Creative Mode in a capped limit world.  (Of which there can be multiples, I would hope.)  For the uninitiated (I use this phrase a lot, I hope it'd not condescending) Creative Mode is essentially the Infinite Lego version of Minecraft where all or most of the block types are immediately and infinitely available for you to build with.  No need to go off and 'harvest' anything, just build your masterpiece and admire it.

It also re-confirms that it will be exclusive to Xperia Play for undisclosed amount of time and, without giving specs out, says it'll run at 30+ FPS.  Which, hey, for Minecraft, is fairly impressive! (Or so I hear.)

No comments:

Post a Comment