The Xbox Games Showcase begins in just 240 hours; in the lead up to the event we are looking at what to expect from each first party studio - today we look at
Mojang Studios.
In the early years of the Xbox One there were a lot of missteps made by Xbox management, the $2.5 billion dollars spent to acquire Mojang and
Minecraft was not one of them. Phil Spencer saw what
Minecraft was and could become but had to wait until 2014 to bring them under the MS umbrella; years earlier he was unable to persuade his bosses at the time to purchase them at what would've certainly been a cheaper price tag. Now six years on from that decision even that $2.5 billion seems like a bargain as they've seen the brand turn into one of the biggest success stories of the decade. While constantly working on
Minecraft proper the studios do work on other projects, recently releasing
Minecraft Earth in 2019 on mobile and
Minecraft Dungeons just a few months ago on PC and consoles.
Firstly, Mojang Studios is and will continue to work on
Minecraft. Seeing as we are entering a new generation, the first with
Minecraft fully under Xbox control, there is going to be a big Series X/S update - but what will it include? The long anticipated Super Duper Graphics pack that would've given the game a huge visual boost was canned in 2019. At around the exact same time we saw some of the first demos of a brilliantly ray-traced version of the game, which we've since seen
running on the Series X, though that may have just been to show off the potential of the hardware. While a visual upgrade is all but guaranteed, there will likely be some new content akin to the Update Aquatic to pair alongside it and really usher in the next generation of
Minecraft. That isn't all that's cooking though, as their recent re-branding announcement stated that
following Minecraft Earth and Minecraft Dungeons they were planning a feature film, epic live show, and even playing with ideas for brand new games. For the purpose of this series, let's overlook the film and live show and focus on the games and what those could be. As Matt Booty
recently stated in one of his interviews with gamesindustry.biz, he believes their franchise dedicated studios can work within their universes to explore new game ideas rather than having to break out and create something brand new - though he didn't flatly rule out that possibility if a studio wanted to.
Minecraft, like
Lego or
Mario, is a perfect universe for this approach as a spin-off game could come from almost any genre. As a result, this makes predicting the ideas they are playing around with almost impossible, though its comforting to know they are continuing to experiment.
So how does Mojang Studios fit into the Showcase? While
Minecraft is a gaming institution at this point, what can they show that would fit in with a bunch of game announcements highlighting the new generation? Is a ray-tracing demo impressive enough? Is that something that could be shown off without making users on Playstation and Nintendo feel like they're missing out if its a feature exclusive to Xbox? Does that even matter, or would that be the point? While Phil clearly wants everyone to be able to play
Minecraft, he would obviously prefer for the majority of those players to do so on Xbox. For that reason I get the feeling we will see a Series X update shown off at the Showcase despite its status as an older game. As for the other ideas they're kicking around, I bet we won't see them until X021 or E3 2022.
Do you expect to see Mojang Studios at the Showcase - If so, what are your hopes? If not, why and when will we see them next?
- 240 Hours Remain -
*If I forget anything or the wording/information is off, feel free to let me know in a post or DM and I'll edit it in; same goes for things you may think I'm unaware of for studios I've yet to post. I try to keep track of everything, but I may lose sight of some smaller things and rumors so all resources are appreciated!
Click the image below to see the posts for each studio that has been revealed so far - (let me know if this is too annoying, and studio names with hotlinks are better)
news.xbox.com
www.polygon.com
www.deviantart.com
