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PIXEL ADVENTURE: A player stands on a mountaintop overlooking the world of Minecraft, a game where players build, explore, and survive in an expansive pixelated landscape. (Corey Philipp)
A mobile version of Minecraft is expected to hit the Android and iOS later this year. It will be unveiled during the E3 Expo games conference from June 7 to 9. The hit game will make its debut on the Xperia Play handset from Sony Ericsson and spread to other Android devices and the iOS from there, according to Wired.
It is likely Minecraft will start on the Xperia Play, as its initial release will leverage the slide-out joypad on the device, and later versions of the game will use touch-screen controls, making them suitable for the other platforms including the iPhone.
Sony Ericsson sent out a Minecraft-themed invitation for June 7, ahead of E3, displaying the Xperia Play along with Minecraft.
Minecraft is an enormously popular computer game allowing players to build nearly anything using materials mined in the game’s destructible environment. In order to gain more previous materials, players need to mine deep below the surface—all the while keeping track of the time—as various enemies will spawn in the dark.
The game was developed independently by Markus “Notch” Persson in less than a year. Although the game is still in its beta stage, not yet reaching final form, it has sold more than 2 million copies.
There will be differences from the PC and Mac versions, according to Gamesutra. “When playing on smartphones you will have a different screen size compared to PC, different hardware, different attention spans and thus the game needs to be customized to fit the mobile specifications,” Mojang, the company behind Minecraft, told them.
It adds that while pricing and an official release date are not yet announced, the game will “release early and update frequently,” in the spirit of Minecraft—which only entered Beta version a few months back.
According to Wired, the port is not being done by Notch, but instead by his colleagues Aron Nieminen and Jens Bergensten.This has been a long time coming. Daniel Kaplan, Mojang head of businesses development stated they decided to “do the iOS/Android version of Minecraft inhouse,” and the port would be out this year.
