Take a small piece of paper and put it on a table. Choose a random number between 1 and 10. Write it on the piece of paper. Memorize it.
Take another piece of paper and put it next the first. Choose another random number, write it down, and memorize it.
Do this until you have 10 pieces of paper in a row. Memorize the location of each piece of paper and the number on each piece of paper.
Now add a new row of 10 pieces of paper.
And another until you have 10 rows of 10 pieces of paper. Each with a random number between 1 and 10. Memorize all of them.
You now have 100 "blocks". Each with one simple element of data. (The real block data is far more complicated than this)
Now have someone come in and swap pieces of paper around. Keep track of what they swap and memorize the new order.
(If you play multi-player, have multiple people swap pieces of paper at the same time)
That's 100 "blocks" (10 by 10). On one plane. XBox handles 743,044 blocks per plain. With a max height of 256, the number of blocks is 190,219,264. All of which have data that needs to be kept track of.
It's not drawing the "crude" blocks that is tough, it's keeping track of all the data contained within *each* and *every* block. At all times.
I might not have all the details exactly right but a lot of people seem genuinely confused about why this game requires so much computer power. All they can see is the game. And the graphics aren't that high end. There is no way for them to understand what is going on behind the scenes. I just wanted to present a different way of looking at it.
Hi guys, I'm new here. I have a question that I think may involve the hardware limitations of the Xbox. I'm just curious why the 360 edition doesn't include all the content that the current version of the PC has. I've played both versions and it only takes a few minutes for me to realize just how much the 360 edition is lacking in terms of the types of items you can make. Does this have anything to do with t he XBox's limited RAM capabilities? Does it have to do with the developers being limited on what they can add due to some kind of agreement between them and Mojang, or what?
Does this have anything to do with t he XBox's limited RAM capabilities?
See all the posts above. That and how MC is programmed for the xbox.
Does it have to do with the developers being limited on what they can add due to some kind of agreement between them and Mojang, or what?
NO.
I think you really want to know is why the xbox isn't like the PC (which is like asking why MCPE isn't like the xbox). And the answer is: any console version won't ever be 'just like the PC', and they're not suppose to be. The xbox version is written for a different, more casual, beginner-type market (hence the tutorial and easy-crafting) than what the (hardcore) PC version has become. Plus we're talking about one program trying to run it's best on two different platforms- the PC isn't a console anymore than a console is a PC. People try to compare the PC and console versions all the time- and totally waste their time trying.
In some of my previous post I've asked questions like could minecraft support more people in a server or wil the worlds ever be infinite (and before everyone gets technical on me and starts correcting me I already know that minecraft isn't completely infinite. However infinite is an easy way to kind of describe it.) . On both of those posts the responses were that the xbox can't handle the truth... I mean minecraft. Minecraft seems like the most basic game I've ever played. The graphics aren't incredible, there aren't cutscenes and the game engine itself isn't what you call the greatest . these facts are what what make minecraft amazing but it hardly seems like they would push the xbox to its limits. Anyway why can't xbox handle 16 people or ever-continuing worlds and other things like that?
I'm sure you've already got your answer, and I didn't read through all the posts... (too many!) But the reason why the xbox is lagging behind so hard is because we have a very limited amount of RAM. I believe the exact amount is 512MB. Which is abysmal. Also the processor is pretty slow and the GPU isn't anything to boast about. I could look up the numbers and stats, etc. but it doesn't matter..
Now let's look at the xbox one.. The xbox has I believe 8GB Of RAM ( I think! ) and has an 8-core CPU.
These specs ARE good enough for your "infinite" worlds... however... I don't believe that Microsoft is making xbox one mincraft infinite... I believe it is only a 2000 by 2000. (vs the 1000 by 1000 in the 360) This is very disappointing... but something we just have to deal with I guess..
Again, many of you are missing the real deficiency here. 4J must program Xbox MC for the least powerful version of the console, namely one without a massive hard drive. A 4GB console does not have a 4GB hard drive. It has 4 GB of flash memory, and that cannot be written to constantly at high rates of speed. It doesn't have the requisite write speed, plus you'll kill flash RAM in short order if you cycle it like RAM. (It has a limited number of write cycles.) The 512 MB of RAM is irrelevant. That's just the size of what can be rendered and manipulated at any given time. It doesn't have to hold all of the world data at once. * The PC game certainly doesn't hold all the game data in RAM at one time. The rest has been swapped out to a hard drive, whether indirectly to an OS swap file, or directly to a game-created data file. This can't happen on the Xbox version because devs can't assume a hard drive is available at all.
* This is confusing, so I'll clarify. What I meant there is that the Xbox MC code could swap data out if it could depend on the presence of a hard drive. Since it can't on all systems, it doesn't even try to do it at all. So worlds must be small.
You're missing something.
What the main question the OP was asking was "... why can't xbox handle 16 people or ever-continuing worlds and other things like that?" In other words, why can't it be as 'full featured' as PC?
Yes, and the kicker is that a hard drive is not required on the Xbox. You can't be swapping huge amounts of data to a storage device unless it meets the size and I/O criteria of a hard drive. Flash memory does not. This, I suspect, is the real issue here with world size, not the 500 MB of RAM. Games must work on the lowest common denominator (such as a 4GB console without a hard drive). So infinitely swappable world data is out.
what? the ram doesnt matter? lol. yes the xbox if you are working off of the original arcade versions does not require a hard drive, but if im not mistaken you are required to have one for xbox live. also for $20 you could have a flash drive with more memory than the original versions hard drive.
the ram is in fact the lowest common denominator at 512mb, the system that allows the chunks to swap out is known as virtual memory. this is a basic form of computing by today's standards but the ram on the xbox just cant handle it, this is the determining factor in why we cant do what pcs can.
think of virtual memory like 2 stacks of paper each piece of paper is a page from a novel. the system shuffles these pages from one stack to the other, but always has to keep them in the right order or else the book will no longer make any sense, but what controls this what allows this to happen, the ram, and the program that keeps the "page numbers" in order. if you barely have enough ram to run a game you will never have enough to keep that data system functioning properly. even the pc has issues like akynth brought up were chunks would get lost and completely dropped, probably trapped in some purgatory between the virtual memory and ram. yes virtual memory uses some of the system memory to keep the chunk data fresh, but with out sufficient ram you would never be able to process the data appropriately.
also you cannot swap out chunks infinitely, no matter how much memory you have or how much ram it will always be finite.
Again, many of you are missing the real deficiency here. 4J must program Xbox MC for the least powerful version of the console, namely one without a massive hard drive. A 4GB console does not have a 4GB hard drive. It has 4 GB of flash memory, and that cannot be written to constantly at high rates of speed. It doesn't have the requisite write speed, plus you'll kill flash RAM in short order if you cycle it like RAM. (It has a limited number of write cycles.) The 512 MB of RAM is irrelevant. That's just the size of what can be rendered and manipulated at any given time. It doesn't have to hold all of the world data at once. * The PC game certainly doesn't hold all the game data in RAM at one time. The rest has been swapped out to a hard drive, whether indirectly to an OS swap file, or directly to a game-created data file. This can't happen on the Xbox version because devs can't assume a hard drive is available at all.
* This is confusing, so I'll clarify. What I meant there is that the Xbox MC code could swap data out if it could depend on the presence of a hard drive. Since it can't on all systems, it doesn't even try to do it at all. So worlds must be small.
Xbox One and Xbox 360 are completely separate... The xbox one I believe has a minimum drive of like 400 GB so your theory doesn't include the newest systems.
Actually, not all XBoxes have hard drives. The Arcade model did not. (not having one, I'm a little unclear on what it did about game saves)
Unlike PC games, where the buyer has to study the system specs on the box to be certain their machine can run the game, with an XBox game, with very few exceptions, if you own an XBox 360, you can play anything that comes in one of those little green boxes. And if you're playing single-player, you're not required to have an Internet connection or XBLA. (remember that one of the reasons for the outcry against the original specs for the XBone was its requirement for a 24/7 Internet connection for any games, even purely single-player games)
I'm a little unclear on what you're saying here. I think by "hard drive updates" you mean updates to the software itself? (TU changes, that is) That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the size of game files, for one thing, and about the amount of data that must be loaded in memory at a time, for another.
If you play Minecraft on a PC, as you move around you'll sometimes see an interesting phenomenon where underground structures (caves, etc.) render, but the surface doesn't. (the second or so before the surface catches up is a good time to spot abandoned mineshafts!) That's because unloaded chunks are being reloaded into memory. This doesn't happen on the XBox 360 because chunks aren't loaded and unloaded the way they are on the PC; they're always resident. There have been arguments here before about whether the XBox can swap data in and out of memory the way the PC can, but the fact that it isn't done in Minecraft is fairly compelling evidence that it can't be, at least not smoothly (it's possible that some games are doing that "behind the scenes" while a cut-scene plays, but I'm fairly sure most of us don't want to wait 30 seconds every time we move a few chunks).
if im not mistaken the arcade had some internal storage i think it was 256 mb. so technically it had a "hard drive' but i think this storage was treated like flash memory instead of an actual hard drive, and of course after that ran out you had to either buy a hard drive or get thumb drives(once they introduced the flash system).
if games where actually built to the lowest common denominator then we would have no games since most of the downloads far exceed that 256 mb
the specs on the one sound really good, its if they incorporated a virtual memory system that will be the determining factor. this is the "shuffle' of data you are referring to. another factor would be the type of ram that is used. since some times work better for various applications, that is one of the few differences between the ps4 and the one, i believe. what ive heard is that they are using different types of ram. these could easily be unsubstantiated claims, or they could be the truth.
it seems to me with all the money that Microsoft invested in the server system they may be intending to use the cloud in an alternate form of virtual memory with the networked consoles that are available for extra processing power, this would lead me to believe Microsoft is using a form of ram that works well with this type of application, not sure which one would be best thats a bit beyond me.
maybe its a multi tiered memory system using both the cloud and internal virtual memory, idk, the cloud is unreliable and the speed in which data can move via the cloud is very limited, its great for saved files, but working as a secondary ram or HD just seems like a stretch, at least for most of us.when you consider data can only move as fast as your internet will allow it.
basically though cost effectiveness is the most important thing when developing a console. there are very expensive ways to do things that may be slightly faster and more compact, but there are always ways to do things that are cheaper and simple and yield very similar if not identical results, its possible to create a single processor that could blow away most multi-core systems, of course it would cost millions of dollars, where as a multi-core system using moderately priced processors is relatively cheap and will yield almost identical results.
if im not mistaken the arcade had some internal storage i think it was 256 mb. so technically it had a "hard drive' but i think this storage was treated like flash memory instead of an actual hard drive, and of course after that ran out you had to either buy a hard drive or get thumb drives(once they introduced the flash system).
The original Xbox 360 Arcade had no internal storage at all, but it did come with a 256mb memory card. At that point USB drives weren't even supported so it had to be the proprietary Microsoft memory card.
what? the ram doesnt matter? lol. yes the xbox if you are working off of the original arcade versions does not require a hard drive, but if im not mistaken you are required to have one for xbox live. also for $20 you could have a flash drive with more memory than the original versions hard drive.
Minecraft for the XBox 360 does not require XBox Live.
With very few exceptions, development is aimed at what the lowest version of the system shipped with, not what you can buy for $20. (by the way, flash drives are not hard drives in ways too numerous to explain here) That's why games on the XBox 360 do not require the player to have a keyboard, even though you can get a suitable keyboard for $5. The development (and approval) target is the game as shipped.
...the system that allows the chunks to swap out is known as virtual memory. this is a basic form of computing by today's standards but the ram on the xbox just cant handle it...
It's not about what the RAM can handle. And it's not about "today's standards" either. You can implement virtual memory on a machine using cores, if you really want to, and it's probably been done. The DEC VAX, back in the early 1980s, supported virtual memory on a hardware level, making for some interesting addressing for someone used to much simpler assembly languages. It's about what the CPU is set up for, and whether there is a place to put the data that is swapped out of real memory.
...if games where actually built to the lowest common denominator then we would have no games since most of the downloads far exceed that 256 mb...
XBLA downloads are kind of an odd thing, because they can have more specific system requirements than shrink-wrapped games. That doesn't change the fact that if you buy a game in the store for the XBox 360, you can run it on your XBox 360, whatever flavor of 360 you have.
Consoles are meant to be "appliance" type game devices. You want to play a game, you buy the game, you play it. They're accessible to the kind of people who wouldn't know what a GPU was if they found one in their corn flakes, and if you asked them how much RAM they had, they'd say they weren't sheep farmers. As a PC gamer, I've spent years studying the system requirements on boxes to ensure that my computer of the time would be able to run what was in that box. As a console gamer, I'm quite happy to know that the little green box I buy in GameStop (or at the flea market) will run on my 360, because it says XBox 360 on the box and that's all that matters.
But, again, that imposes limitations on the developers. That game in that box has to run on my 360 whether I bought it 8 years ago or just last week. And one of those limitations is that of virtual memory. I'm not going to research whether virtual memory management is practical on the 360; given that I've seen it done on a Sinclair ZX-81, it's certainly possible. But given that the minimum 360 specs do not require a storage medium that could be used for memory swapping, it's not a part of the target platform. It can't be required.
Hi guys, I'm new here. I have a question that I think may involve the hardware limitations of the Xbox. I'm just curious why the 360 edition doesn't include all the content that the current version of the PC has. I've played both versions and it only takes a few minutes for me to realize just how much the 360 edition is lacking in terms of the types of items you can make. Does this have anything to do with t he XBox's limited RAM capabilities? Does it have to do with the developers being limited on what they can add due to some kind of agreement between them and Mojang, or what?
Geneo answered the technical reasons well enough.
The other reason the 360 version doesn't have all the features/items is that development started a year behind the PC version, and the 360 remains about a year's worth of revisions behind.
We'd need Mojang to stop working on MC-PC while 4J continued development for MC360 to catch up in items, etc.
Since MC-PC is a moving target, MC360 will never be caught up.
(I started out on a ZX81! Man, them were the days. You kids have no idea how far computing has come.)
(Yes, I'm that old)
(sigh)
Ah yes, the old Timex-Sinclairs. I did a little work on one of those. Spent more time on Apple II's, Atari 800XL, Commodore Plus4 and TRS-80
One benefit from seeing the variety of machines was getting a deep appreciation for writing cross-platform code and porting code.
Here's an interesting thought to consider, to blow this thread out of the water.
MC-PC was written in Java, and has to do "more work" in order to render 3d content, as it is not a native application (running in the JRE is NOT native).
MC360 was a logical re-write (the game logic code was easily portable) and replaced the rendering code because the 360 game is written in C++.
It is quite probable that the C++ code base, which runs natively on the 360 hardware is actually performing BETTER than the PC version.
Meaning, that if one took the C++ code base and re-compiled on the PC (windows mainly), that the resultant version of the game actually runs more efficiently than the equivalent version of the Java based game.
So, to turn this on its head, the MC-PC game is handicapped by Java and it COULD run better if it was a native C++ application like MC360 is.
That's exactly what I've been saying all along! That the PC (java) version is 'getting long in the tooth' now and patched, pushed, and prodded way beyond what it was originally envisioned. I'm actually surprised it still works as well as it does. Java was used in the first place because it wasn't OS specific, so MC could be run on any computer that runs java (Win, Mac, Linux, etc.)
Look how far the 360 version has come in the last year and a half!
On topic, if the 360 was first and had a 1-2 year head start, we'd all be wondering why the PC lags behind so.
Ah yes, the old Timex-Sinclairs. I did a little work on one of those.
Just a quibble here: No, not the Timex-Sinclairs. The Sinclairs, from back before Timex licensed them and sold some in the US. There were some differences on the hardware level, especially with regard to memory. My first mail-order business was selling 2k memory upgrade kits for the 1k ZX-81. (back when it was assumed that if you owned a computer, you knew how to solder!)
I'm a little unclear on what you're saying here. I think by "hard drive updates" you mean updates to the software itself? (TU changes, that is) That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the size of game files, for one thing, and about the amount of data that must be loaded in memory at a time, for another.
No, I'm referring to saving game data, not TU's... allow me clarify, when you load the game into RAM, you HAVE to load the entire map from the Hard Drive, when the game saves, it technically doesn't need to write back the entire map data to the Hard Drive, it only had to update the changes that were made since the last load.
As long as the game keeps a table of the specific blocks that were changed, then upon saving or updating, it really only needs to consult that table for those changes and doesn't have to reload the entire chunk, especially if the greater majority of the chunk remained untouched.
It's a similar concept to a roaming desktop. If I log into my roaming profile at my normal computer station, it only takes a few minutes for my profile to load (because it only loads the changes between my Hard Drive and the last time I updated my roaming profile), the more wholesale changes I make (copy, save, delete, install) to my desktop, the longer it is going to take to write back to the server when I log out (because it is only updating the changes I made and not updating everything changed and unchanged).
However, if I try to log in at a completely new computer (one I haven't sat at before or recently had the Hard-drive re-imaged), it can take more than 15 minutes for that computer to pull down my roaming profile.
I don't know if MCX360 takes advantage of only updating changes or not, but the point is that it could be done progamatically, and IMO should be done for games that are as data intensive as this one is.
It really boils down to a multipronged issue involving a bunch of corporate choices made by Mojang, 4J and Microsoft combined over the last several years.
For some reason, people here just seem to be compelled to try to insist that it's a single thing... so, they wind up arguing about "it's the RAM... it's not the RAM, it's the storage... It's not the storage, it's Microsoft's rules... It's not... etc., etc. etc. etc. - and arguing about it isn't going to change anything. No one is going to go back and rewrite the whole game to get unlimited worlds onto the Xbox 360 since that would most likely jump the price of the game to a level higher than the majority of console gamers would be willing to pay for it (particularly since the game has already been out for several years and the PC version would still be available for much less). For the same reason, it is highly unlikely that they will rewrite the whole game to get unlimited worlds onto the Xbox One either... They will enlarge the world, certainly, but it will likely to continue to function in the same basic way it does now on the Xbox 360.
There is little point in just recreating this same game from scratch now on several different platforms since the market will inevitably hit a saturation point and then interest will inevitably wane over time. Yes, Minecraft is having a good, long run... but even the longest runs in the market eventually run out. I'm sure the corporation involved already have thoughts that they would be better spending the money on developing an entirely new idea rather than just adding more "space" to Minecraft worlds.
Take another piece of paper and put it next the first. Choose another random number, write it down, and memorize it.
Do this until you have 10 pieces of paper in a row. Memorize the location of each piece of paper and the number on each piece of paper.
Now add a new row of 10 pieces of paper.
And another until you have 10 rows of 10 pieces of paper. Each with a random number between 1 and 10. Memorize all of them.
You now have 100 "blocks". Each with one simple element of data. (The real block data is far more complicated than this)
Now have someone come in and swap pieces of paper around. Keep track of what they swap and memorize the new order.
(If you play multi-player, have multiple people swap pieces of paper at the same time)
That's 100 "blocks" (10 by 10). On one plane. XBox handles 743,044 blocks per plain. With a max height of 256, the number of blocks is 190,219,264. All of which have data that needs to be kept track of.
It's not drawing the "crude" blocks that is tough, it's keeping track of all the data contained within *each* and *every* block. At all times.
I might not have all the details exactly right but a lot of people seem genuinely confused about why this game requires so much computer power. All they can see is the game. And the graphics aren't that high end. There is no way for them to understand what is going on behind the scenes. I just wanted to present a different way of looking at it.
See all the posts above. That and how MC is programmed for the xbox.
NO.
I think you really want to know is why the xbox isn't like the PC (which is like asking why MCPE isn't like the xbox). And the answer is: any console version won't ever be 'just like the PC', and they're not suppose to be. The xbox version is written for a different, more casual, beginner-type market (hence the tutorial and easy-crafting) than what the (hardcore) PC version has become. Plus we're talking about one program trying to run it's best on two different platforms- the PC isn't a console anymore than a console is a PC. People try to compare the PC and console versions all the time- and totally waste their time trying.
Oh, and welcome to the forum.
I'm sure you've already got your answer, and I didn't read through all the posts... (too many!) But the reason why the xbox is lagging behind so hard is because we have a very limited amount of RAM. I believe the exact amount is 512MB. Which is abysmal. Also the processor is pretty slow and the GPU isn't anything to boast about. I could look up the numbers and stats, etc. but it doesn't matter..
Now let's look at the xbox one.. The xbox has I believe 8GB Of RAM ( I think! ) and has an 8-core CPU.
These specs ARE good enough for your "infinite" worlds... however... I don't believe that Microsoft is making xbox one mincraft infinite... I believe it is only a 2000 by 2000. (vs the 1000 by 1000 in the 360) This is very disappointing... but something we just have to deal with I guess..
* This is confusing, so I'll clarify. What I meant there is that the Xbox MC code could swap data out if it could depend on the presence of a hard drive. Since it can't on all systems, it doesn't even try to do it at all. So worlds must be small.
What the main question the OP was asking was "... why can't xbox handle 16 people or ever-continuing worlds and other things like that?" In other words, why can't it be as 'full featured' as PC?
And we've all been answering that.
what? the ram doesnt matter? lol. yes the xbox if you are working off of the original arcade versions does not require a hard drive, but if im not mistaken you are required to have one for xbox live. also for $20 you could have a flash drive with more memory than the original versions hard drive.
the ram is in fact the lowest common denominator at 512mb, the system that allows the chunks to swap out is known as virtual memory. this is a basic form of computing by today's standards but the ram on the xbox just cant handle it, this is the determining factor in why we cant do what pcs can.
think of virtual memory like 2 stacks of paper each piece of paper is a page from a novel. the system shuffles these pages from one stack to the other, but always has to keep them in the right order or else the book will no longer make any sense, but what controls this what allows this to happen, the ram, and the program that keeps the "page numbers" in order. if you barely have enough ram to run a game you will never have enough to keep that data system functioning properly. even the pc has issues like akynth brought up were chunks would get lost and completely dropped, probably trapped in some purgatory between the virtual memory and ram. yes virtual memory uses some of the system memory to keep the chunk data fresh, but with out sufficient ram you would never be able to process the data appropriately.
also you cannot swap out chunks infinitely, no matter how much memory you have or how much ram it will always be finite.
Xbox One and Xbox 360 are completely separate... The xbox one I believe has a minimum drive of like 400 GB so your theory doesn't include the newest systems.
if im not mistaken the arcade had some internal storage i think it was 256 mb. so technically it had a "hard drive' but i think this storage was treated like flash memory instead of an actual hard drive, and of course after that ran out you had to either buy a hard drive or get thumb drives(once they introduced the flash system).
if games where actually built to the lowest common denominator then we would have no games since most of the downloads far exceed that 256 mb
the specs on the one sound really good, its if they incorporated a virtual memory system that will be the determining factor. this is the "shuffle' of data you are referring to. another factor would be the type of ram that is used. since some times work better for various applications, that is one of the few differences between the ps4 and the one, i believe. what ive heard is that they are using different types of ram. these could easily be unsubstantiated claims, or they could be the truth.
it seems to me with all the money that Microsoft invested in the server system they may be intending to use the cloud in an alternate form of virtual memory with the networked consoles that are available for extra processing power, this would lead me to believe Microsoft is using a form of ram that works well with this type of application, not sure which one would be best thats a bit beyond me.
maybe its a multi tiered memory system using both the cloud and internal virtual memory, idk, the cloud is unreliable and the speed in which data can move via the cloud is very limited, its great for saved files, but working as a secondary ram or HD just seems like a stretch, at least for most of us.when you consider data can only move as fast as your internet will allow it.
basically though cost effectiveness is the most important thing when developing a console. there are very expensive ways to do things that may be slightly faster and more compact, but there are always ways to do things that are cheaper and simple and yield very similar if not identical results, its possible to create a single processor that could blow away most multi-core systems, of course it would cost millions of dollars, where as a multi-core system using moderately priced processors is relatively cheap and will yield almost identical results.
The original Xbox 360 Arcade had no internal storage at all, but it did come with a 256mb memory card. At that point USB drives weren't even supported so it had to be the proprietary Microsoft memory card.
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Retired StaffMinecraft for the XBox 360 does not require XBox Live.
With very few exceptions, development is aimed at what the lowest version of the system shipped with, not what you can buy for $20. (by the way, flash drives are not hard drives in ways too numerous to explain here) That's why games on the XBox 360 do not require the player to have a keyboard, even though you can get a suitable keyboard for $5. The development (and approval) target is the game as shipped.
It's not about what the RAM can handle. And it's not about "today's standards" either. You can implement virtual memory on a machine using cores, if you really want to, and it's probably been done. The DEC VAX, back in the early 1980s, supported virtual memory on a hardware level, making for some interesting addressing for someone used to much simpler assembly languages. It's about what the CPU is set up for, and whether there is a place to put the data that is swapped out of real memory.
XBLA downloads are kind of an odd thing, because they can have more specific system requirements than shrink-wrapped games. That doesn't change the fact that if you buy a game in the store for the XBox 360, you can run it on your XBox 360, whatever flavor of 360 you have.
Consoles are meant to be "appliance" type game devices. You want to play a game, you buy the game, you play it. They're accessible to the kind of people who wouldn't know what a GPU was if they found one in their corn flakes, and if you asked them how much RAM they had, they'd say they weren't sheep farmers. As a PC gamer, I've spent years studying the system requirements on boxes to ensure that my computer of the time would be able to run what was in that box. As a console gamer, I'm quite happy to know that the little green box I buy in GameStop (or at the flea market) will run on my 360, because it says XBox 360 on the box and that's all that matters.
But, again, that imposes limitations on the developers. That game in that box has to run on my 360 whether I bought it 8 years ago or just last week. And one of those limitations is that of virtual memory. I'm not going to research whether virtual memory management is practical on the 360; given that I've seen it done on a Sinclair ZX-81, it's certainly possible. But given that the minimum 360 specs do not require a storage medium that could be used for memory swapping, it's not a part of the target platform. It can't be required.
The golden age: it's not the game, it's you ⋆ Why Minecraft should not be harder ⋆ Spelling hints
(Yes, I'm that old)
(sigh)
Geneo answered the technical reasons well enough.
The other reason the 360 version doesn't have all the features/items is that development started a year behind the PC version, and the 360 remains about a year's worth of revisions behind.
We'd need Mojang to stop working on MC-PC while 4J continued development for MC360 to catch up in items, etc.
Since MC-PC is a moving target, MC360 will never be caught up.
Ah yes, the old Timex-Sinclairs. I did a little work on one of those. Spent more time on Apple II's, Atari 800XL, Commodore Plus4 and TRS-80
One benefit from seeing the variety of machines was getting a deep appreciation for writing cross-platform code and porting code.
Here's an interesting thought to consider, to blow this thread out of the water.
MC-PC was written in Java, and has to do "more work" in order to render 3d content, as it is not a native application (running in the JRE is NOT native).
MC360 was a logical re-write (the game logic code was easily portable) and replaced the rendering code because the 360 game is written in C++.
It is quite probable that the C++ code base, which runs natively on the 360 hardware is actually performing BETTER than the PC version.
Meaning, that if one took the C++ code base and re-compiled on the PC (windows mainly), that the resultant version of the game actually runs more efficiently than the equivalent version of the Java based game.
So, to turn this on its head, the MC-PC game is handicapped by Java and it COULD run better if it was a native C++ application like MC360 is.
Look how far the 360 version has come in the last year and a half!
On topic, if the 360 was first and had a 1-2 year head start, we'd all be wondering why the PC lags behind so.
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Retired StaffJust a quibble here: No, not the Timex-Sinclairs. The Sinclairs, from back before Timex licensed them and sold some in the US. There were some differences on the hardware level, especially with regard to memory. My first mail-order business was selling 2k memory upgrade kits for the 1k ZX-81. (back when it was assumed that if you owned a computer, you knew how to solder!)
The golden age: it's not the game, it's you ⋆ Why Minecraft should not be harder ⋆ Spelling hints
No, I'm referring to saving game data, not TU's... allow me clarify, when you load the game into RAM, you HAVE to load the entire map from the Hard Drive, when the game saves, it technically doesn't need to write back the entire map data to the Hard Drive, it only had to update the changes that were made since the last load.
As long as the game keeps a table of the specific blocks that were changed, then upon saving or updating, it really only needs to consult that table for those changes and doesn't have to reload the entire chunk, especially if the greater majority of the chunk remained untouched.
It's a similar concept to a roaming desktop. If I log into my roaming profile at my normal computer station, it only takes a few minutes for my profile to load (because it only loads the changes between my Hard Drive and the last time I updated my roaming profile), the more wholesale changes I make (copy, save, delete, install) to my desktop, the longer it is going to take to write back to the server when I log out (because it is only updating the changes I made and not updating everything changed and unchanged).
However, if I try to log in at a completely new computer (one I haven't sat at before or recently had the Hard-drive re-imaged), it can take more than 15 minutes for that computer to pull down my roaming profile.
I don't know if MCX360 takes advantage of only updating changes or not, but the point is that it could be done progamatically, and IMO should be done for games that are as data intensive as this one is.
For some reason, people here just seem to be compelled to try to insist that it's a single thing... so, they wind up arguing about "it's the RAM... it's not the RAM, it's the storage... It's not the storage, it's Microsoft's rules... It's not... etc., etc. etc. etc. - and arguing about it isn't going to change anything. No one is going to go back and rewrite the whole game to get unlimited worlds onto the Xbox 360 since that would most likely jump the price of the game to a level higher than the majority of console gamers would be willing to pay for it (particularly since the game has already been out for several years and the PC version would still be available for much less). For the same reason, it is highly unlikely that they will rewrite the whole game to get unlimited worlds onto the Xbox One either... They will enlarge the world, certainly, but it will likely to continue to function in the same basic way it does now on the Xbox 360.
There is little point in just recreating this same game from scratch now on several different platforms since the market will inevitably hit a saturation point and then interest will inevitably wane over time. Yes, Minecraft is having a good, long run... but even the longest runs in the market eventually run out. I'm sure the corporation involved already have thoughts that they would be better spending the money on developing an entirely new idea rather than just adding more "space" to Minecraft worlds.
Have a well deserved Like.