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Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

bbc.com

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Re: Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

#31

Post by citricsquid »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #22
citricsquid wrote: post #8

Not related to the point at hand, but why don't people mention the millions of copies sold on other platforms? More than 7.5 million copies of the title have been sold Minecraft has sold 7.5 Million (+) of the PC version, it has also sold millions of copies of the iOS version, the Android version and the Xbox version which just recently broke 5 (edit: sorry, 4) million sales. Seems strange not to say something like:…

In the agreements for some of those distribution channels there are stipulations against releasing specific sales data.

Specific? Maybe, but Mojang are open about the general sales figures. They frequently talk about them and we republish them, example of the Minecraft studio announcing 4 Million sales: http://twitter.com/4JStudios/status/252480126128885761

Re: Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

#32

Post by citricsquid »

Vivtek wrote: post #26
bayes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently (I'm in London UK) Minecraft has a huge folllowing among boys aged (roughly) 8-14. As long as that demographic remains obsessed there'll be a constant new market.

Yeah, my 13yo just latched onto it recently.

I have a question for you if you've got a moment: what part of Minecraft is your son most involved in (eg: playing with his friends, creating modifications, building cool things alone)? And if he's involving in playing online, do you know if he has any involve with Minecraft communities?

I'm getting the feeling more and more recently that Minecraft may eventually become what BBSes were to the 90s: a way for "new" to the internet people to get involved in the community side of the internet (vs. just being a "consumer") and by extension the technical side. We (the Minecraft forum) have 10s of thousands of teenagers that are now programmers contributing code and creating things just because of Minecraft, people that probably wouldn't have got involved in programming this early in life otherwise.

I'm curious if that sort of effect extends beyond those actively involved in the official Minecraft communities, but I have no real way to find out as my reach only covers the Minecraft forum.

Re: Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

#33

Post by daliusd »

ZoFreX wrote: post #11
kleiba wrote: post #3

From the article: Mr Persson revealed his views in two tweets. From twitter: Got an email from microsoft, wanting to help "certify" minecraft for win 8. I told them to stop trying to ruin the pc as an open platform. I'd rather have minecraft not run on win 8 at all than to play along. Maybe we can convince a few people not to switch to win 8 that way..

But certification isn't new, and is still optional... I don't understand why developers are up in arms over it? Also, is it intrinsically bad? It's proving that the software you installed is from a particular publisher and hasn't been tampered with, isn't that a good thing?

Could you name second bigest Android app store?

I think there are at least two problems:

1) average user will not download anything what's not in win8 app store; a) There are extra burden to upload app to store and pass QA process (I think the only exception here is Google). Haven't you heard horror stories about clueless QA people?

2) there are extra warnings for apps that are not from win8 app store (like in Mac OS X). E.g. I find it annoying because I use relatively lot of tools that are not from app store. Again average user might prefer safe way over risky one and it is problem for indie (game) developers.

Re: Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

#34

Post by morsch »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #25
morsch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you certify and offer a shop for certified apps where the shop owner gets a cut this creates a huge incentive for the owner to do everything in its power to get more apps into the shop.

There will always be apps people need that don't fit in the store. e.g. 18+ games won't be available but lots of PC users want to play them. If Microsoft made it so only certified apps could be installed they would lose a lot of users to alternative platforms. People are looking at this like it is a slippery slope. It could be but it's highly unlikely as it would hurt consumers and the barriers to switching OS aren't…

There's no need to completely prevent non-certified content from being accessed, you just make it a second class citizen, e.g. by making installation more difficult or restricting the access to native interfaces. E.g. you can increasingly fall back to distributing stuff that's incompatible with Apple's morals using HTML5, so customers don't need to switch devices to access some version of it.

Barriers to switching are falling as more people are using cross-platform stuff (first and foremost, web content and apps) but at the same time they are increasing as people get a large portfolio of content that is either not available or that they haven't bought for other platforms. E.g. switch from iOS to Android and lose access to game X that's not available on Android, app Y that's available but you only bought an iOS license and, of course, convenient access to your collection of iTunes music and videos.

Contrast this to a waning desktop era where most casual users seemingly only used and paid for three pieces of software (office, browser, something else) and had much of their other content in cross-platform containers (CD/DVD, MP3, Xvid, office files).

Re: Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

#35

Post by SquareWheel »

This is the most overdone news story in recent months. It was two tweets, and yet entire articles are being written analyzing a small quip.

Now how many times do we have to go over the argument? x86, for the moment, is just as open as Windows 7. ARM is not, it's very locked down. Windows 8 as a whole consists of both versions, in that respect it's considered less open. The fear is that we're going to see ARM become the major OS (for various reasons, mostly tablets/phones/mobiles becoming more popular) and at that point there won't be an open Windows. That's the concern. Yes, it's a slippery slope argument, but it looks to be the direction we're headed in.

And please, stop with the "then why did he release on iOS/Xbox" argument ad nauseam, it's an ecosystem which was locked down from the beginning, nothing is being "lost".

This story has really embittered me, so I apologize if this is brash. But all the personal attacks I see on various websites against Notch are incredibly disheartening.

Re: Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

#36

Post by SquareWheel »

citricsquid wrote: post #32
Vivtek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my 13yo just latched onto it recently.

I have a question for you if you've got a moment: what part of Minecraft is your son most involved in (eg: playing with his friends, creating modifications, building cool things alone)? And if he's involving in playing online, do you know if he has any involve with Minecraft communities? I'm getting the feeling more and more recently that Minecraft may eventually become what BBSes were to the 90s: a way for "new" to…

(And the Wiki, of course.)

I think Minecraft as a programming teaching tool would be a whole lot more valuable with a proper API and hopefully that will be introduced before the game starts to fizzle. It would be one less barrier to entry for kids, as currently they have to learn Java and get thrown into a messy (deobfuscated) codebase. Not exactly the best first experience with programming.

I think Valve's Portal 2 map maker is another good example. They give you a really nice interface for the easier stuff, and then for advanced changes you can import it into Hammer.

Re: Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

#37

Post by gavanwoolery »

ido wrote: post #9
citricsquid wrote: post #8

Not related to the point at hand, but why don't people mention the millions of copies sold on other platforms? More than 7.5 million copies of the title have been sold Minecraft has sold 7.5 Million (+) of the PC version, it has also sold millions of copies of the iOS version, the Android version and the Xbox version which just recently broke 5 (edit: sorry, 4) million sales. Seems strange not to say something like:…

It's really surprising (to me) that 10k people per day are still buying pc minecraft. I'd think pretty much everyone that was interested in a game like that would have gotten it by now? How can there still be 10k new people per day (over what, 3 years now?) that have just found out about minecraft?

I have found that kids are particularly attracted to it, and a new generation of kids matures every year - most of them have access to funds, so it is often purchased on special occasions (i.e. birthdays). It is kind of the new Legos for kids. They had drawing from kids up on the wall in my local supermarket - roughly 10 of the 50 drawings had Minecraft characters in them.

Re: Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

#38

Post by freehunter »

mtgx wrote: post #5

The thing is Windows 8 is radically changing a lot of stuff and that won't sit well with most businesses in the PC world. Maybe Windows 8 won't give Valve or Notch a death blow by removing the "desktop mode", but I think it's pretty obvious that Microsoft wants the future of Windows to be "Metro-only", and these guys can see that. So it's not Windows 8 per se that they are mad about. It's the whole direction Windows…

I'm not sure Microsoft is explicitly wanting this change. It's a reaction to the shifting computing environment; the iPad showed that the PC isn't the only platform that people want to use, and that some people only want to use tablet computers. I feel Microsoft would have been more than happy to keep developing Windows the way they always have, but they've seen the writing on the wall. Windows isn't what the users want.

Microsoft didn't start the locked down tablet market. They're just the newest player. If you want to assign blame, blame the users.

Re: Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

#39

Post by CodeCube »

citricsquid wrote: post #32
Vivtek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my 13yo just latched onto it recently.

I have a question for you if you've got a moment: what part of Minecraft is your son most involved in (eg: playing with his friends, creating modifications, building cool things alone)? And if he's involving in playing online, do you know if he has any involve with Minecraft communities? I'm getting the feeling more and more recently that Minecraft may eventually become what BBSes were to the 90s: a way for "new" to…

My 8yo son, 11yo daughter, 10yo niece, and 14yo nephew all recently got into it. I set up a server for them.

My nephew I think might become an architect, he loves making real-world looking buildings, complete with furniture, rooms, bathrooms.

The daughter and niece make houses where they live with each other. My daughter in particular takes her room, and adds a panic room (for when the mobs attack).

And my son has recently taken to building redstone gadgets. He took a room and put a switch on the wall, then ran redstone on the outside up to the attic to power glowstone blocks that he recessed into the ceiling. That way he can turn the lights on and off.

They mostly use the tekkit mod, and I've been trying to get them into programming by showing the how the computercraft turtles work ... it's a work in progress :P

Re: Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

#40

Post by ps2000 »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #13

>> ""Microsoft owns the Xbox. Apple owns the iOS. The charm of the PC is that nobody owns it... " Yes, but Microsoft owns Windows. The certification change doesn't affect the PC it affects Windows users. His final comment is a lot more balanced: >> "Microsoft is free to do whatever they want with their OS. I won't support all of what they do, however" His comment about Microsoft trying to ruin the PC as an open platf…

Yeah, the reality is that most game vendors ruined open desktop platforms. There was a time when Windows and PCs were still big and mobile gadgets were only used by business people. During that time the biggest hurdle for many people that wanted to leave Windows was that the cool games just worked on Windows.

I think nobody will feel sorry for the game industry loosing their last desktop platform. After all you need a lot of cash to make games experience on the desktop comparable to game experience on a top-notch game console.

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