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Minecraft Reaches Beta Status, Price Goes Up

Posted by Soulskill on from the another-notch-in-the-belt dept.

Eric writes "After over a year of development, Minecraft has hit Beta status today. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009. With the new milestone, the price of the game has increased to €14.95; when Minecraft moves beyond beta status, it will sell for €20.00. The beta is more focused on polish and content. The aim is to add proper modding support via a stable API, some kind of non-intrusive narrative to help drive the game experience early on, and a late-game goal. Updates will be less frequent, so as to make sure stability is maintained thanks to more extended testing. Despite this, there have already been two beta releases: client and server Beta 1.0 followed quickly by client 1.0_01."

4 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Preorder now! by srothroc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was written; you were paying for a product that existed at the time, with the bonus being unlimited future updates. Beta purchasers are not eligible for the unlimited future updates, unfortunately. A lot of people, me included, obviously thought that the game as it was in its nascent alpha stage was worth the 10-15 USD (depending on the exchange rate) being charged for it.

    --
    http://www.tenjou.net/
  2. Re:Preorder now! by Sockatume · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not like Notch twisted anybody's arm. Several hundred thousand people, myself included, enjoy the game enough in its current form to be willing to pay for it. And if that means it's cheaper and we get all the add-ons for free, all the better.

    --
    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  3. Poor programmer? by gilleain · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Regardless of whether you blame Minecraft's success on luck or Notch's genius, he's a rather poor programmer. If you read through the release notes on his blog, he's apparently incapable of adding features without breaking lots of stuff on the way and waiting for him to fix basic functionality can take months.

    I don't know if that's true or not, but I do know that programming 'under the spotlight' can be very distracting. What with twitter, blog comments, and forums there are far too many ways for the customer base to contact Notch 24/7. That's got to make fixing stuff hard if people are constantly shouting "FIX IT!" in your ear.

    1. Re:Poor programmer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm pretty tired of the "unless you've done something better, shut up" argument. Why do I need to demonstrate I'm a super-star programmer before I can complain about a game that isn't fun? Or a best-selling musician before I can comment on how crappy certain songs are? If I call a film out as having really poorly-acted, is my opinion invalid because I'm not Ian McKellan?

      If you have released something into the public eye, and it is flawed, then you know what? I'm going to say so. I'm not going to hold my mouth shut while thinking "well, I don't know how to fix his game-save corruption bug, so I guess it's none of my business", especially if I've paid for the damned thing. I'm going to say "Hey, what happened to my save? Fix it!" And likewise, if they make something great, then I'll say so too. If the programmer/musician/actor/whoever is worth their salt, they'll learn from the criticism, and graciously accept the praise.

      Now, don't get me wrong; the AC above was being whiny, especially given the game's literally under 24 hours out of Alpha. But just tell them "Hey, you're being a whiny bitch, file a bug report and enjoy what works", not "Could I just see your programming credentials? Oh, Mr. Newell, I didn't know... I guess this means you were right all along."