On this week’s GamesBeat Decides podcast, host Jeffrey Grubb and co-host Mike Minotti go over the news from the last week. Then in the second half of the show, they speculate on what it means that Minecraft is going free-to-play in China while it gets a marketplace where players can sell content to one another.
Is this a precursor to one of gaming’s biggest hits going free-to-play everywhere? Listen to hear what we decide.
In addition to Minecraft, Jeff and Mike check in on Overwatch and its latest cooperative event. Is this what we want from the shooter? We’ll make a decision about that as well.
This week, Roblox Corporation, the San Mateo, California-based developer of the popular online social gaming platform for kids known as Roblox, announced the closure of its first private equity offering in more than five years.
The funding round, which raised $92 million for the company, was primarily backed by Meritech Capital Partners, a venture capital firm that was an early investor in many tech giants such as Snapchat, Facebook and Index Ventures. In addition to expanding the company’s mobile strategy, the funds raised will also be used to repurchase shares from those employees who wish to cash out of some of their equity. (For related reading, see: Is Microsoft Stock a Bargain at Tech-Bubble Highs?)
Minecraft Rival
The game Roblox allows its players to create their own virtual worlds, and is often described as being very similar to Microsoft’s Minecraft video game. Microsoft acquired Minecraft for $2.4 billion in 2014. The funds raised from the recent funding round could help to better position Roblox to compete with Minecraft. The main ages for the users of both gaming platforms ranges from 6 years to 16 years.
According to the company’s corporate website, Roblox’s platform currently sees 48 million monthly users while a March 2017 article in Bloomberg reports that Minecraft has a total of 55 million active users. (For more, see also: Can LinkedIn Become Microsoft’s Instagram?)
The Business Model
Although Roblox declined to disclose the valuation at which their recent financing round was offered, an article that was published in Forbes last summer revealed that the company had realized more than $50 million in gross revenues in the year 2015. The company primarily makes its money by selling a virtual currency to its players and also by charging a subscription fee to developers who use the platform to develop games. Roblox also takes a commission from purchases on games that were made by developers. Some of Roblox’s top game creators are reportedly making as much as $50,000 a month.
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* Minecraft introduces Minecraft Coins, which can be bought using in-app purchases on device; coins let creators set flexible prices, take share of sale Source text : bit.ly/2ojvqD6 Further company coverage:
Nintendo also confirmed that the Switch version will support both online and local multiplayer. Eight players can play together online, while up to four can craft at once on the TV in split-screen or in tabletop mode.
In addition, Minecraft’s Super Mario mash-up pack will also come to Switch, allowing you to explore blocky versions of Mushroom Kingdom-themed worlds alongside characters such as Luigi and Waluigi.
As has been well-documented, Minecraft is a sort of breeding ground for Pokémon fan recreations. Somebody made a working Game Boy Advance capable of playing Pokémon Fire Red last summer, while another fan created an entirely new 3D Pokémon adventure, all in Minecraft. If you’ve been reading the site for a while, you might also remember the fan who was working on a fully functional recreation of Pokémon Red. He was off to a strong start in 2015, and now, the project is finally finished (via Polygon).
When we last checked in on Mr. Squishy, who went by Magib1 at the time, he had the Pokédex, basic game mechanics, and the world map done. Now, he’s finally finished, and the game is a true port, meaning that he didn’t just make a Game Boy emulator in Minecraft and load the Pokémon Red ROM into it: He recreated the entire game from scratch.
In the above video interview with Polygon, Mr. Squishy explains how that process worked and why it was necessary:
Minecraft has command blocks, which allow you to write code in-game. There’s no easy way to just take the ROM for one of these old games and dump it into Minecraft. To get all of the functionality in the game, you basically need to re-code everything from the ground up inside the game, so that’s what I’ve done here.
Mr. Squishy also documented the process on Reddit and answered some questions there, revealing that so much effort went into this endeavor: He walked over 1,760 in-game miles and used 357,000 command blocks over the 21 months it took to finish the project. Even all of the game’s original glitches have been recreated. Now that’s dedication.
Of course, this Minecraft-based Pokémon game is a totally different beast from the other aforementioned efforts…
The Pokémon Fire Red remake is more graphically intensive since it’s a GBA game, but movement is a bit choppy and it’s still very much a work in progress (although the latest version of the game has made great strides and it looks fairly accurate at this point).
Then there’s Pokémon Cobalt and Amethyst, which is in a completely different league. Instead of recreating an existing game, this one is a completely new adventure in 3D. It copies the original game mechanics, and it’s sort of like a merge of Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Sun and Moon, so it’s very robust. It has an original plot and even a bunch of brand new Pokémon, so the game definitely goes beyond the call of duty.
Each of these fan projects are special in their own way, and a testament to how versatile of a creation environment Minecraft can be to people with good ideas and ambition.
Feel free to download the Pokémon Red remake for yourself and give it a go, right here. Are you going to try this out, or are you going to stick to your emulators, or perhaps an original cartridge? Hit up the comments below and let us know what you think!
Minecraft is still a very popular game played on multiple platforms. However, today we will talk about Minecraft for Apple TV, which is finally receiving Realms Multiplayer that will allow you to purchase servers and play with your friends online.
After installing the latest Minecraft update on your Apple TV, you will notice that the “Realms” feature is activated, which is Minecraft’s subscription-based multiplayer system. We have to mention that this upgraded version also supports “Xbox Live authentication” option, which will allow the players to access their linked character skins and avatars.
After purchasing a “Realms” account, you will receive your own Minecraft server, which is maintained by Microsoft. This means that you will not have to worry about things like hosting or IP addresses, as all of these will be made by the company headquartered in Redmond, Washington.
Keep in mind that you will be able to control who is able to join your private Minecraft Realm in order to make sure that no one is messing up with your world while you are offline. The good thing about “Realms” is that the server is online 24/7, which means that your friends are able to join and keep building and having fun in this game while you are offline.
An official private Minecraft server that allows up to two players in it costs $3.99 per month, while for a ten player Realm you will have to pay $7.99 per month. The bad news is that if you have a friend of yours who already plays Minecraft on Linux, PC or Mac, he will NOT be able to play with you, as these are different platforms.
In other words, there are two separate Realms systems: one for computers and one for mobile handsets that includes iOS, Android and Windows 10 Mobile. We’re not sure if Mojang and Microsoft will decide to connect the two platforms, but that might happen in the future.
