Star Citizen‘s much-anticipated Alpha 3.0 update isn’t coming out on time. Developer Cloud Imperium Games announced recently that it discovered some “stability issues” in the latest build, and thus the team needs more time to get it ready “for prime time.”

“This week, we entered the optimisation, polish, and bug fixing phase for the 3.0 feature set. As there have been so many features and content implemented, we’ve encountered some stability issues that we want to address before going to a wider test audience,” the developer said in a post on its website (via Eurogamer).”

“The ongoing work on the new Patcher system (that will save you from having to completely re-download each build) and some new bugs with CopyBuild3 (our internal version of the patcher) have also slowed us down. Because of this we have pushed back the Evocati and subsequent date ranges to reflect the additional time needed to get Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 ready for prime time.”

According to Eurogamer, the Alpha 3.0 update was originally scheduled to come out at the end of August and now it’s due at the start of September, so it’s a small delay.

Will “Soulcrusher” Leverett, Star Citizen’s director of player relations, said in a follow-up post. “Working on 3.0 has certainly introduced variables and challenges that we could never have anticipated, and these just do not always cater to a tidy date on a calendar,” Leverett said.

Leverett added: “There’s certainly no malice behind it, and anyone who makes that claim is providing an uninformed opinion. Ask any project manager or developer who worked on sophisticated software or has been involved on a complex project with lots of dependencies and moving parts. They’ll gladly share how challenging a task of estimates can be.”

The developer added that all of Cloud Imperium Games is “working feverishly” to finish the Alpha 3.0 update, adding that this version of 3.0 will be “something bigger, something pretty groundbreaking, something magnificent.”

Star Citizen’s Alpha 3.0 update adds an “entirely explorable solar system” and adds the first tools and systems that players can use to create outpost and communities. Those are just a few of the new features–you can read this blog post to learn more.

Star Citizen is the most successful crowdfunded project of any kind in history. By the latest count, the game has raised more than $155.6 million in funding.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 Delayed

Nintendo has unveiled a new map debuting soon in Splatoon 2. However, this particular level won’t be joining the game’s usual stage rotation; rather, it will only appear during Splatfest events.

The new map, dubbed Shifty Station, will only be available in the stage rotation during Splatfests, the in-game competitions that have players choose one of two opposing teams and compete to earn points for their side. Nintendo says the map’s layout changes between Splatfests, so players will be battling on a different version of the map each time it appears in the game.

Shifty Station will presumably debut with the game’s first Splatfest, which is coming up during the first weekend of August. Nintendo hasn’t announced timing details for the event just yet, but like the Splatfest World Premiere demo that took place the week before Splatoon 2 released, this particular competition will also revolve around food. This time, players must choose which condiment they prefer: mayo or ketchup?

Splatoon 2 launched for Nintendo Switch on July 21. The game was very well-received when it debuted; critic Kallie Plagge awarded it an 8/10 in GameSpot’s review and called the game “a vibrant and exuberant sequel with enough fresh additions and changes to set it apart from the original.”

Switch-Exclusive Shooter Splatoon 2’s Newest Map Revealed

Minecraft Cross-Play Beta Now Available, Coming To Xbox One Soon

One of the major problems with Minecraft is the number of different editions, with varying level of multiplayer cross-play. This stems from different code bases – the console versions are based on the original Java game, while Pocket/Windows 10 Edition use the same C++ code base. But the upcoming Minecraft PE 1.2 update, nicknamed the ‘Better Together Update,’ aims to address this.

The main new feature in this update is cross-play with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch players. It’s not entirely clear if the current console edition is being replaced, but Mojang says existing owners of Xbox One Edition or Switch Edition will “receive the brand new version of Minecraft for free, and your existing worlds and DLC will come along to the new version with you.” The new version will simply be called ‘Minecraft,’ separate from the various Editions and the PC version (which is now called Java Edition).

A beta version of the Better Together Update is available today for Windows 10 Edition and Pocket Edition, but you won’t be able to try out the cross-play yet. The Xbox One beta required for cross-play will arrive in a few days, but there’s no word on a Switch beta (I’m not entirely sure if the Switch’s eShop supports beta programs).

However, there is still plenty of new content you can try out in the beta right now. Most of the changes were previously only available on the Java and/or Console Editions, so it’s definitely nice to see them arrive on mobile. Here is the full list of new features:

• Stained Glass
• Fireworks (with Elytra boost!)
• Parrots
• Banners
• Armor stands
• Jukebox and music discs
• Recipe Book
• Book and Quill
• Ravines
• COARSE DIRT
• New world start options: Starting Map, Bonus Chest, Trust Players
• New game rules: TNT Explodes, Natural Regeneration
• Added ‘/tickingarea’ command to create areas that still update when no players are there
• Player permissions
• Zombie Villager spawn egg
• In-game host options
• New loading screens with funny and helpful tips
• How to Play screen
• Remix 3D and structure blocks
• Split-screen (Console only)
• World conversion
• Player limit increased on higher end devices
• Maps can be held off-hand
• Ice blocks are transparent

If you want to sign up for the beta on Android, you can join it (or leave it) here. It probably goes without saying that you have to own the game on Google Play first. To join the Xbox One beta, check out the instructions at the source link below.

Minecraft PE ‘Better Together Update’ enters beta, will have cross-play with Xbox and Nintendo Switch

A Londonderry theatre is to host the world’s first play performed by both human actors and avatars – digitised versions of the cast – in the computer game, Minecraft.

Playcraft Live will be performed at the city’s Playhouse Theatre on 14 October.

It will simultaneously be streamed to the world online via the theatre’s website, Minecraft and Youtube.

Slipping between both stage and game world, the story will unfold across different locations and times.

Minecraft is the second-best-selling videogame of all time.

It allows players to build things using cubic blocks and take part in exploration, engineering, crafting and combat.

The game is hugely popular with children and young teenagers.

The production will see the dramatisation of a script, written specifically for Playcraft by Alex Scarrow, author of the teen science fiction series of novels, Time Riders.

The story is based between books one and two of his Time Riders series.

Online audiences will experience the production as a live-stream simulcast.

For those lucky enough to be part of the Playhouse audience, they will be able to see the physical actor on stage communicating the play to them.

‘Completely new’

They will also see a stream of the digital version of that actor, within the Minecraft world, projected onto a screen.

These avatars will be developed and built by Minecraft experts operating from an adjacent room.

Kieran Griffiths, creative director at the Playhouse Theatre, said he was excited to be introducing something “completely new to the world of theatre”.

“The production is hugely ambitious and a definite step into the unknown, but a tremendous opportunity to allow two artistic worlds to come together and learn from each other,” Mr Griffiths said.

The project will also involve renowned creative producer Adam Clarke and digital educators MakeMatic.

It has been commissioned by The Space, which is funded by the BBC and Arts Council England

“I suppose the thorny rose in between is the technology,” Mr Griffiths said.

“Over the coming months we have to remove the thorns and make sure that rose is passed gracefully.

“At the end of it, we hope to produce an educational asset whereby we will see online amateur societies creating their own world within Minecraft.”

Throughout the summer, Minecraft fans will be invited to join in on the production, find out more about the play and contribute to the process along the way.

World first for Derry theatre’s Minecraft play

Minecraft’s “Better Together Update” is rolling out now in beta, for players on Windows 10 PCs and Android devices. That means players on either platform with the beta installed will be able to participate in games from either type of device, together in cross-platform play.

This update was originally revealed at E3 back in June, and includes other feature additions like community servers and a community Marketplace with paid add-ons. There are also a range of new in-game item types, multiplayer host and permission options, and more.

The beta is also set to roll out for Xbox One “soon,” Microsoft says, which will add the gaming console to the cross-platform action. Microsoft also said when the update was announced that it’ll eventually add support for the Play Together Update to iOS, Nintendo Switch and VR devices (Sony was apparently offered the chance to participate in the update for PlayStation, but declined).

To get in on the beta, players will need the Xbox Insider app for Windows 10 and Xbox One, and on Android they’ll need to have Google Play and of course everyone will need a copy of the game.

This could be huge for unifying Minecraft’s massive player community, which is already quite the club.

Minecraft’s cross-platform ‘Better Together’ update arrives in beta

Once every decade or so, a game comes along that becomes more than just a game, more than just a franchise, and evolves into a genuine cultural phenomenon. In the 70s it was Space Invaders, in the 80s it was Super Mario Bros and Tetris. The 90s and noughties brought us Pokemon and Halo.

If you had to choose one title that broke out of the relatively niche world of gaming over the past decade, it would have to be Minecraft.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or should that be block?) somewhere, you’ll probably know about it.

Even if you’ve never played it, you’ll have seen the cuboid characters and trademark pixelated art style on everything from toys to t-shirts. Minecraft is designed with creativity at its core, allowing players to build their own objects, structures – even entire worlds out of 3D textured blocks in a procedurally-generated environment.

It actively encourages co-operation and collaboration, allowing thousands of players to work together on group projects, or team up to battle enemies and the elements in Survival mode. Its open-ended, sandbox structure means that there’s no beginning or end to the game, and players are limited only by their own imaginations.

After selling 130 million copies to date, its already the world’s second biggest selling video game  (behind only Tetris), of all time.

it wasn’t much of a surprise when tech behemoth Microsoft decided to acquire the rights to the intellectual property from visionary developer Markus “Notch” Persson in September 2014. What was surprising was the price; a whopping $US2.5 billion ($NZ3.4b) making it not only the biggest gaming buy-out of all time, but one of the technology industry’s largest ever acquisitions.

Building on success

The future of Minecraft was one of the key focuses of Xbox’s E3 showcase in Los Angeles last month.

After spending that kind of cash on a single game, everybody expected Microsoft to have big plans for Minecraft. The most obvious move would have been to make the game an Xbox and Windows exclusive, but interestingly, the company decided to go in the opposite direction, focusing their efforts on releasing a version of it on practically every format known to mankind.

Seriously, if you own a device that’s capable of running a video game, there will almost certainly be an adaptation of Minecraft for it. It’s on everything from Android phones to Apple TV. Microsoft’s strategy seemed to be proliferation rather than progression, choosing not to mess with a winning formula or release a guaranteed smash hit sequel, but instead to spread the Minecraft seed as far and wide as possible.

This business model made a lot more sense when, at last month’s E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles, Xbox chief Phil Spencer unveiled the company’s grand plan for the the future of the world’s most popular video game.

Ooh, shiny

A fully upgraded lighting system is one of the major improvements in the Super Duper Graphics Pack

The first revelation was that the game was to undergo a complete visual overhaul, which, in typical Minecraft fashion, is to be called the “super-duper graphics pack”.

Ostensibly, this was to take advantage of the new Xbox One X’s 4K GPU, but for a game that has always been deliberately lo-fi and retro in terms of its art style, it did seem like a strange decision to render all these pixelated cubes in Ultra HD.

On closer inspection though, it’s clear that the update is more about visual effects than the graphical assets themselves. While the game retains its trademark pixelart style, it’s the world around it that has been given a new lick of paint..

A side-by-side comparison of how Minecraft looks now, and how it will appear once the new graphics pack is installed.

Dynamic shadows created by Minecraft’s new directional lighting system means that what you see is constantly changing as you move through the world, and the appearance of your constructions will vary depending on where your character is standing and the position of the sun or other light sources. The addition of HDR gives deep blacks and bright colours a noticeable “pop” factor.

Edge highlighting creates clearer, more defined boundaries between individual blocks and a completely revamped water system means that rivers, lakes and streams look more lifelike than ever before.

Of course, you’ll need a 4K monitor to get the most out of this graphical overhaul, but there’s more than enough here to ensure that even gamers using standard 1080p TVs will see the benefit.

Unifying worlds

Perhaps the most exciting revelation however, was that Minecraft would be going cross-platform. Up until now, players have been restricted to teaming up with friends on the same system, meaning the millions of Minecraft gamers around the world have been pigeon-holed and walled off into small, if thriving, communities.

The decision to tear down these walls and bring everyone together on one unified server is  a literal game changer. In a world where everything is about teamwork and co-operation, making it possible for an iPhone user to work with a friend on Xbox or join a grand-scale collaborative construction job on PC means that things are going to get bigger and better.

There’s a lot of potential in this strength in numbers strategy. In one fell swoop, Microsoft and Mojang have created one of the world’s biggest gaming communities.

Large-scale collaborative projects have seen the creation of sprawling worlds in Minecraft, including a full reproduction of the land of Westeros from TV’s Game of Thrones.

Minecraft is already being used in schools as an educational tool and the fact that kids will now be able to hop on their phones at home to continue working on a project they started on their school computer network means that “homework” is going to be a much easier sell for teachers.

Unfortunately, the cross-platform plan won’t include every single format. Sony, Microsoft’s main rival in this generation’s console wars, has refused to come to the party, meaning that PlayStation users won’t be joining in just yet. However, if the Minecraft phenomenon continues to grow at its current rate, you have to wonder if they’ll reconsider and get involved if things start to snowball.

Minecraft: The next generation

Coffee Stain are the studio behind Goat Simulator and Tower Defense Sanctum. “With our ambitious plans for Coffee Stain Publishing, we had to find the right people, and that’s not always easy,” Anton Westbergh, CEO of Coffee Stain Studios and Publishing, says.

“I’ve known Kaplan for 10 years (we even shared a bed once at Gamescom!), and I’m excited to have him join us! Kaplan is great, and shares our core game philosophies; we can’t wait to have him apply his magic on our products.”

Kaplan says he’s a big fan of the studio and he’s excited to work with the team responsible for one of the “weirdest titles in the world” – that’ll be Goat Sim. Coffee Stain will be at Gamescom showing off their new game, Deep Rock Galactic. It looks like Minecraft in space, with dwarves.

Check out the announcement on the Coffee Stain blog.

Ten-year Minecraft veteran Daniel Kaplan leaves Mojang for Goat Simulator

If ever there was an event specifically designed to send the regular Sydney Opera House clientele into a near-fatal frenzy of monocle popping, it was this one: a video game festival hosted at Australia’s most famous cultural icon.

But whatever misgivings one may have about Minecraft at the Opera House, when I arrive the mood is buoyant.

Children weave in and out of bollards, cleaving the air with plastic pixilated swords, taking selfies with giant cardboard renderings of pigs, llamas and box-headed humans. More still stand in line to meet the “celebrities of Minecraft” – a concept that would be impossible to even begin to explain to someone 10 years ago. Others are marshalled into groups, waiting side stage in the concert hall to take part in Australia’s first Minecraft tournament.

The parents take in the scene with an air of contented bafflement.

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Their confusion is understandable: on the surface, Minecraft as a popular game, let alone an international phenomenon, is hard to explain.

Created by Markus “Notch” Persson in 2009, Minecraft is what’s known as a “sandbox” game – a genre typically defined by an absence of clear goals or win conditions, and an emphasis on creation and free-play. In Minecraft you are born without ceremony or context into a world made up of blocks. These blocks can be mined and placed in any configuration the player desires, and for this reason the game is often described as an environment where you can build “anything you can imagine”.

To a degree this is true, although it does suggest that the collective imagination of the hive mind is overwhelmingly preoccupied with creating enormous effigies of Super Mario. In the past, players have used the game’s universe to build painstaking reconstructions of Taj Mahal, the International Space Station and – of course – the Sydney Opera House.

Australia’s first Minecraft tournament is playing out in the main concert hall. With three sessions over the course of the festival, and each session comprising seven rounds with 48 children per round, over a thousand kids will compete over the two days. At the start of each round, four dozen children are marshalled on to stage, organised through a system of coloured wristbands that, throughout the hours I am at the event, I will never understand.

The version of the game used for competition is rapid and combat-based and so this experience is less about the unchained power of the imagination and more about shoving one another into big pools of lava. There is little to no mining or crafting in this iteration of the game, and at the end of each round, the winning children are interviewed by the host, who quizzes them on their strategies, their faces projected on to a gigantic screen at the back of the stage.

According to an astonishingly fashionable kid in a leather jacket and asymmetrical haircut, the trick is to “get a weapon and run”. The host can’t fault this and asks for a high five. Leather jacket kid opts for a fist bump.

Outside the concert hall, the back foyer bar hosts banks of PCs manned (child-ed?) by dozens of kids working on a more recognisable form of the game. Block by block, like the medieval lords of yore, they build enormous garrisons, undertake large-scale agricultural projects and – possibly less like the medieval lords of yore – ward off demented skeletons with swords forged from pure diamonds. This space in the Opera House typically given over to baby boomers quaffing $14 riesling is now full of kids waiting in line (it must be said, far more patiently than I’ve seen boomers queue for riesling) for the chance to make something unique from scratch.

The popularity of Minecraft content on YouTube and Twitch is staggering: in fact, “Minecraft” is the second-most searched term on YouTube, just behind “music”. Perpendicular to the free-play area there’s another line, this one maybe 50 deep, to talk to Wyld and MrCrayfish: two celebrity Minecrafters with massive profiles on both YouTube and Twitch.

These two affable men sit behind a small table and receive their visitors one at a time, leaning in close to hear deeply technical questions from the kids. The overwhelming majority of these questions are impenetrable to the layman, and watching each and every parent nod along with their kid while one of the experts explains an insanely specialised aspect of, say, complex redstone systems, is genuinely heartwarming.

Like the game itself, the sheer scale of Minecraft’s success can be difficult to comprehend. Statistics can tell part of the story. At the time of writing, around 55 million players log into the game each month; in 2016 the game sold around 55,000 copies per day; and in 2014 it was sold to Microsoft for $1.5b, allowing Persson to retire and pursue another of his passions full-time: being insanely cross on the internet.

The lead developer and designer is now Jens Bergensten, a tall, rake-thin and bearded Swede who, throughout the day at the Opera House, will wander into the foyer to greet fans. The first time I see him he’s at the business end of a massive line of devotees, dutifully signing posters, posing for photos and answering questions.

There’s a calm awkwardness about Bergensten. It gives him an air that’s less “mogul at the helm of a multi-billion dollar empire” and more “viking who has become lost at the shops”.

The live event is meant to reflect the ethos of the game, I’m told by the COO of Mojang, Vu Boi, who has travelled with Bergensten to the event. Just as there’s no one way of playing Minecraft, there’s no one way to experience the day.

He’s not wrong about this, but there’s something else too: the game itself is the second-most perfect encapsulation of the seamless meeting of “high” and “low” art that I can think of (the most perfect being the time that Salman Rushdie became addicted to Super Nintendo). Bringing a video game to the hallowed sails of the Opera House is a neat expression of that philosophy.

Minecraft competition brings fights and fist bumps to the Sydney Opera House