Minecraft officially hits iPhone, iPad this year

Posted in iPhone News by admin. Published February 22nd, 2011

Minecraft officially hits iPhone, iPad this year

The latest sensation in indie sandbox construction for the PC gaming platform is Mojang’s Minecraft, which has already nabbed around 1.3 million paying customers as of last month despite also being available in a free “Classic” download version. Now the 3D building world is officially coming to Apple’s iOS devices including the iPhone and iPad sometime later this year.

Mojang’s Minecraft mastermind, Markus “Notch” Persson, explains that Minecraft on the iOS won’t be a strict port of the PC releases, and will instead be tailored to better support touch screen interfaces. Persson has also recruited another helping hand to get the iOS ports done right.

It’s still not clear what form Minecraft is will be taking on iOS platforms, as the PC version is available in both free Classic and paid Beta downloads. The paid beta, currently available on the official site for around $20 bucks USD, is more involved than the free Classic version because it introduces survival gameplay elements. Here the player must acquire and hunt for resources in randomly generated worlds to build whatever their imagination can cook up, in order to overcome environmental hazards or beat back hostile mobs which spawn at night or in darkly lit areas. Of course, they may also have to deal with griefers on multiplayer servers.

Getting Minecraft in any form is already a pretty win for iOS gaming, as there isn’t any (official) version announced for the Android yet.

[Thanks: http://www.neoseeker.com]