Xbox 360 Edition

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is the upcoming edition of Minecraft for the Xbox 360, announced at the 2011 E3 conference by Notch and Microsoft. MineCon attendees had a chance to play the Xbox Edition before its release. Notch has stated that the Xbox 360 will be the sole console provider of Minecraft.

Development
Notch later announced the team developing the game would be 4J Studios. Daniel Kaplan tweeted about receiving an early copy of Minecraft for Xbox on September 7th, 2011. Additionally, updates will be free of charge, much like on PC, and much like all other games for consoles.

Differences from PC edition
For the most part the Xbox 360 edition of the game is identical to the PC edition, but has several notable differences and features:


 * The player can optionally make use of Xbox Kinect functionality to assist in their gameplay, although Kinect functionality is not available at launch.


 * The Xbox 360 edition doesn't make use of the standard crafting interface as in the original version, but still has similarities to the PC's 2x2 and 3x3 crafting grids. The interface doesn't require the Player to place items in the correct place in a crafting menu, but simply shows the blocks required to craft the selected item, and crafts it if the Player has enough blocks.


 * The game features split-screen functionality. 4 players in split screen, as well as the possibility to play 8-person online multiplayer game modes in split-screen.


 * Mods, Texture Packs and extra player skins will be available much later.


 * The Xbox 360 edition includes a tutorial mode not included in the PC version of the game. This tutorial leads the player through the basics of mining and placing blocks, crafting as well as building their first house to survive the night (video).


 * You always begin a new world with a map unlike the PC edition.

MineCon
The game was showcased as a playable demo at Minecon 2011 and was deemed a 'work in progress'. 4J Studios confirmed that it has all the features of the Minecraft PC version Beta 1.6.6. IGN also filmed a video at MineCon here showing that the graphics look very similar to the graphics in the PC edition.

Release
In October 2011, Microsoft said the release was planned for Spring 2012. On March 22nd the official release date was posted by Larry Hryb, the Director of Programming for Xbox Live, as May 9th.

Cost
The cost of the Xbox edition of Minecraft is 1600 Microsoft Points.

Besides the Xbox edition of Minecraft there are also Minecraft-themed Xbox Live avatar items available. Among these include Minecraft shirts, pets, items, props, and headwear, dashboard themes, and gamerpics, all of which range from 80 to 240 Microsoft Points in price.

Trivia

 * 4J Studios, the company responsible for the port to Xbox 360, was also responsible for several other video game ports, namely Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, and Perfect Dark for XBLA as well as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for the PS3.
 * Minecraft was added to the Xbox Arcade download section in November 2011, although it was only possible to download the "Its here!" trailer. Nonetheless, the entry holds very high ratings.