My son recently got a 4 gig Xbox 360. He bought minecraft for it. He was very disappointed because he thought he should be able to spawn dragons and have a lot more things than the standard PC version. Please explain to me kindly in terms that i can understand (I have no idea about video games at all) if I have to do something to make it the way he thinks it should be. I think he needed an xbox one and that minecraft to get what he wants.
In the simplest terms, the PC version is significantly ahead, feature-wise, of the XBox and Playstation versions.
To expand a bit: The PC version is created first, since that's being developed by Mojang itself. Then 4J Studios, the company doing the port to the consoles, converts features from the PC version to the console versions -- which includes, by the way, a complete rewrite, due to differences in programming languages (Java vs. C++). Then it has to be submitted to the console owners (Microsoft and Sony) for certification testing and approval, and possibly tinkered with some more, before it's released as an update. Meanwhile, the PC version has gone on ahead. So even if the consoles were capable of equalling the PC capabilities, there's still a significant time lag due to the development/conversion/testing process.
Further, the XBox 360 came out in November, 2005. That's almost 9 years now. And one of the requirements for a console game is that it has to run on any version of the target console. So even if you have one of the first, most limited 360s, you can take home that green box and put the disc in and play the game. This tends to limit the extent of the features available. What was a cutting-edge system 9 years ago is almost laughable today, when it comes to gaming capability. Minecraft for the PC probably wouldn't run well on a computer that was sold in 2005 -- but Minecraft for the XBox 360 has to. So this leads to some fairly stringent limitations on what it's able to do.
The bottom line: the PC has more cool stuff. The console versions have their own benefits -- enormous ones, in my opinion (I started with MC/360 myself) -- but there is nothing you can do to make the features of Minecraft for the 360 (or, when it's out, the XBone) equal, let alone surpass, the features of Minecraft for the PC. Due to the development system, where the console games are ports of the PC original, and due to the platform limitations, which require the console games to be able to run on systems that the PC game wouldn't stand a chance on, it will always be that way.
He was very disappointed because he thought he should be able to spawn dragons and have a lot more things than the standard PC version.
* First, as explained above, the consoles will never have "a lot more things than the standard PC version". Don't know where he got that idea. Consoles has some different stuff that the PC doesn't have (like Easy Crafting), but more stuff? Naw.
* The One version, at first, won't be any different from the existing 360 version (except for larger worlds). In other words, (at first) you guys won't gain anything by getting the One version. The future is different, though. A year or two from now the One version will be much better than 360 version... but it still will not have all the PC features.... though it might have it's own unique features too.
* To be honest, there's no way to "get what he wants" or meet his expectations. (Something tells me he's been watching too many youtubes.) For instance, as I read the wiki, he can't "spawn dragons" himself (even in the PC version). There is a Ender Dragon in both versions, but it will take him many (many) hours of playing before he has the skills (or gathered enough materials to craft the items he needs) to take on that dragon. http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Ender_Dragon
* To be honest again, killing dragons isn't all that Minecraft is about. There's many other aspects to the game. If 'killing dragons' is that important to him, there's other, better games out there for that.
EDIT: Sorry, but I read your post to mean that he expected MC to already have certain things in it and was disappointed that it didn't. UpUp (see post below) read your post differently (and I now believe correctly) that your son wanted the ability to change MC himself and make his own modifications to the standard game. (I'm still kinda confused- which way is it?). Of course, as UpUp explains, you can't do that on any of the console versions- only the PC version. Naturally, your son needs to know how to program if he wants to write "mods"- and if he doesn't know how then he has a steep (and long) learning curve ahead of him.
I'll throw an off-the-cuff idea out there: if he wants to create something with his own stamp on it, the upcoming Project Spark may be more up his alley. It's in playable public beta now, can run on his console, he doesn't need to know any fancy programming, and the graphics are much, much better than Minecraft. That's what Project Spark is- a program for you to make whatever you want.... or take someone else's efforts and 'tweak' it some to make it exactly like you want it. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/games/project-spark#fbid=wNNbQEj2QbD
I'd google "Project Spark".
As explained above, Minecraft is first and foremost a PC game that was "ported" onto the consoles starting a year behind the PC version. As a result, it is being updated along the same lines as the PC, but at a rate that has essentially kept it more than a year behind the PC version. Since the primary creator of the game continues to update and change the basic PC version and then a large community develops/writes mods for that version, it's unlikely that the console versions will ever "catch up" to even the basic PC version. The console edition programmers are essentially chasing a moving target.
His disappointment with his purchase could have been easily avoided by doing some honest research on consoles first and then, if he still decided to buy a console, then downloading the trial version of the game first. On the consoles, the games are what they are. The user doesn't have the opportunity to "reprogram" them (known as modding) as they can do on the PC. So, basically, with any console game, you're getting the "standard console version." They are not "open source" and do not allow for community written programs. That's not going to be any different on the Xbox One. If he figures he wants to get into modding his games, you're better off not buying any more consoles and just saving the money to eventually get him a good PC (high powered enough to run games). I warn you, however, good gaming PCs are expensive... and then there's a host of peripherals that become almost "musts" to purchase if PC gaming is something that he wants to get into.
ETA: Probably more than any other game on the market, Minecraft exemplifies the PC "open-source", community driven game development. There are numerous young people out there (younger than we think) who really want to effectively learn to write their own games or to expand on them rather than just play games as someone else has written them. These young people are becoming increasingly savvy about programming and PC Minecraft has done much to encourage them to develop their talents by allowing them to freely develop mods (modifications) for the game and distribute them on the internet (they just can't charge a fee for their mods).
This culture just doesn't exist on the consoles where programmers contributing to the console games must be authorized by the manufacturer of the console. Porting Minecraft onto the console has created a "false expectation" that the community-based mod development would be also "ported" across in some fashion... but that hasn't happened and there are numerous reasons why it will likely never happen. Instead, I think parents need to educate themselves on this "cultural difference" between console gaming and PC gaming rather than just buying their children consoles because they're cheaper when the child's expectations stem from a desire to get into the self-programming side of gaming rather than just playing "ready packaged" games.
To be perfectly honest, I did not buy the gaming console for my child. He had been working and saving the money for the last three months and chose to buy the console as a means to keep in touch with his friend, who is moving this week, through xbox gold. To me, it was his money and he is just starting to enjoy gaming. He has watched some YouTube videos but I am pretty sure a classmate convinced him he could do really unique thing a with xbox minecraft. Thanks Geneo, your comments were most helpful. I am grateful to those who chose to kindly answer my questions without judgment.
Thank you! That is the kindest response yet. I am proud of the choices my child has made. He likes the vanilla version well enough, he was just confused because of the information he was given/heard. I don't have fights about games that are outside his maturity level.
To be perfectly honest, I did not buy the gaming console for my child. He had been working and saving the money for the last three months and chose to buy the console as a means to keep in touch with his friend, who is moving this week, through xbox gold. To me, it was his money and he is just starting to enjoy gaming. He has watched some YouTube videos but I am pretty sure a classmate convinced him he could do really unique thing a with xbox minecraft. Thanks Geneo, your comments were most helpful. I am grateful to those who chose to kindly answer my questions without judgment.
I'm sorry if you felt that I was passing judgment on you. I wasn't intending that and I can share your pride in your son's setting out to purchase this himself. It is a difficult topic for me in that my family ultimately lost a young loved one who apparently got lured into gaming programming via the internet (starting out doing adhoc modding as a teenager) and unltimately lured away from home to a foreign country where he ultimately became disenchanted by it. Over the past two years, I've seen numerous posts by people who expected the Xbox environment to be the same as the PC in regards to community driven programming opportunities... and it's just not the same. I've seen young people resorting to breaching the TOS on the Xbox in order to do modding on their Xbox and word wars rage here on the forums all the time.
There are, of course, big benefits to encouraging young people to pursue an understanding of programming... and fiddling around with modding games is one way in which they can learn a lot of the skills they'll need if they want to pursue it as a career... and I think it's really great that, on the PC, Minecraft has done so much to give young people the opportunity to mod their game legitimately. However, there are some downsides to the degree of "franchising" that has occurred and also it's just not something everyone can or should pursue. For it to work where everyone finds themselves happy, more people do need to enter into all of this with their eyes open wider... and not expecting the console and PC environments to be able to operate exactly the same way.
There is, of course, somewhere in all of this a "good" middle ground. I believe that the developers of Minecraft on both platforms are working hard and with integrity to find the middle (by doing things like redrafting the EULA agreement for the PC version).
As I said, I'm sorry you interpreted my post as passing judgment on you. It's a difficult topic for me and one I really struggle to write about and project the degree of objectivity that I do feel.
ETA: I should also add just for clarity that the game my loved one was involved with as a teenager was not Minecraft.
It is okay, it did feel judgmental, however I believe in walking in another's shoes. I am a rather protective mom, and if it wasn't for the ability to talk to his friend I never would have allowed the xbox and even now slightly nervous that anybody can talk my ten year old son. But he is sensible and I really hope programming is something he finds fun as long as he understands people aren't whom they seem. I didn't mean to be overly defensive, I just felt it should be understood that I wasn't one of those parents that bought just because my son thought he needed the item. He is still young and relatively naive about games.
It is okay, it did feel judgmental, however I believe in walking in another's shoes. I am a rather protective mom, and if it wasn't for the ability to talk to his friend I never would have allowed the xbox and even now slightly nervous that anybody can talk my ten year old son. But he is sensible and I really hope programming is something he finds fun as long as he understands people aren't whom they seem. I didn't mean to be overly defensive, I just felt it should be understood that I wasn't one of those parents that bought just because my son thought he needed the item. He is still young and relatively naive about games.
As I said, I'm sorry my post lead you to think that I thought you were "one of those parents" when, in fact, because you took the step to come here and ask the question, I firmly understood that you were not one of those. What happened to my loved one was also much more complex that I could ever talk about here... even after many years of healing.
Since you appear to have now assumed (a) that I was the parent of my loved one and that I was "one of those" - You should perhaps know, however, that he was not my son, his mother was a very involved parent but was naive about the world of video gaming, and he worked and bought all of his equipment himself. He was only about 13/14 when it all got started.
The allure of gaming programming is, in many respects, much the same as the allure of Hollywood in days gone by... and some of the most avid dreamers pay an inordinately high price for their dreams. Harsh realities can usually be dealt with somehow by most young people... but first, they have to learn to recognize them for what they are... and consoles are worlds apart from PCs (not better, not worse... just different).
thank you for the help!
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Retired StaffTo expand a bit: The PC version is created first, since that's being developed by Mojang itself. Then 4J Studios, the company doing the port to the consoles, converts features from the PC version to the console versions -- which includes, by the way, a complete rewrite, due to differences in programming languages (Java vs. C++). Then it has to be submitted to the console owners (Microsoft and Sony) for certification testing and approval, and possibly tinkered with some more, before it's released as an update. Meanwhile, the PC version has gone on ahead. So even if the consoles were capable of equalling the PC capabilities, there's still a significant time lag due to the development/conversion/testing process.
Further, the XBox 360 came out in November, 2005. That's almost 9 years now. And one of the requirements for a console game is that it has to run on any version of the target console. So even if you have one of the first, most limited 360s, you can take home that green box and put the disc in and play the game. This tends to limit the extent of the features available. What was a cutting-edge system 9 years ago is almost laughable today, when it comes to gaming capability. Minecraft for the PC probably wouldn't run well on a computer that was sold in 2005 -- but Minecraft for the XBox 360 has to. So this leads to some fairly stringent limitations on what it's able to do.
The bottom line: the PC has more cool stuff. The console versions have their own benefits -- enormous ones, in my opinion (I started with MC/360 myself) -- but there is nothing you can do to make the features of Minecraft for the 360 (or, when it's out, the XBone) equal, let alone surpass, the features of Minecraft for the PC. Due to the development system, where the console games are ports of the PC original, and due to the platform limitations, which require the console games to be able to run on systems that the PC game wouldn't stand a chance on, it will always be that way.
The golden age: it's not the game, it's you ⋆ Why Minecraft should not be harder ⋆ Spelling hints
* First, as explained above, the consoles will never have "a lot more things than the standard PC version". Don't know where he got that idea. Consoles has some different stuff that the PC doesn't have (like Easy Crafting), but more stuff? Naw.
* The One version, at first, won't be any different from the existing 360 version (except for larger worlds). In other words, (at first) you guys won't gain anything by getting the One version. The future is different, though. A year or two from now the One version will be much better than 360 version... but it still will not have all the PC features.... though it might have it's own unique features too.
* To be honest, there's no way to "get what he wants" or meet his expectations. (Something tells me he's been watching too many youtubes.) For instance, as I read the wiki, he can't "spawn dragons" himself (even in the PC version). There is a Ender Dragon in both versions, but it will take him many (many) hours of playing before he has the skills (or gathered enough materials to craft the items he needs) to take on that dragon.
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Ender_Dragon
* To be honest again, killing dragons isn't all that Minecraft is about. There's many other aspects to the game. If 'killing dragons' is that important to him, there's other, better games out there for that.
EDIT: Sorry, but I read your post to mean that he expected MC to already have certain things in it and was disappointed that it didn't. UpUp (see post below) read your post differently (and I now believe correctly) that your son wanted the ability to change MC himself and make his own modifications to the standard game. (I'm still kinda confused- which way is it?). Of course, as UpUp explains, you can't do that on any of the console versions- only the PC version. Naturally, your son needs to know how to program if he wants to write "mods"- and if he doesn't know how then he has a steep (and long) learning curve ahead of him.
I'll throw an off-the-cuff idea out there: if he wants to create something with his own stamp on it, the upcoming Project Spark may be more up his alley. It's in playable public beta now, can run on his console, he doesn't need to know any fancy programming, and the graphics are much, much better than Minecraft. That's what Project Spark is- a program for you to make whatever you want.... or take someone else's efforts and 'tweak' it some to make it exactly like you want it.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/games/project-spark#fbid=wNNbQEj2QbD
I'd google "Project Spark".
His disappointment with his purchase could have been easily avoided by doing some honest research on consoles first and then, if he still decided to buy a console, then downloading the trial version of the game first. On the consoles, the games are what they are. The user doesn't have the opportunity to "reprogram" them (known as modding) as they can do on the PC. So, basically, with any console game, you're getting the "standard console version." They are not "open source" and do not allow for community written programs. That's not going to be any different on the Xbox One. If he figures he wants to get into modding his games, you're better off not buying any more consoles and just saving the money to eventually get him a good PC (high powered enough to run games). I warn you, however, good gaming PCs are expensive... and then there's a host of peripherals that become almost "musts" to purchase if PC gaming is something that he wants to get into.
ETA: Probably more than any other game on the market, Minecraft exemplifies the PC "open-source", community driven game development. There are numerous young people out there (younger than we think) who really want to effectively learn to write their own games or to expand on them rather than just play games as someone else has written them. These young people are becoming increasingly savvy about programming and PC Minecraft has done much to encourage them to develop their talents by allowing them to freely develop mods (modifications) for the game and distribute them on the internet (they just can't charge a fee for their mods).
This culture just doesn't exist on the consoles where programmers contributing to the console games must be authorized by the manufacturer of the console. Porting Minecraft onto the console has created a "false expectation" that the community-based mod development would be also "ported" across in some fashion... but that hasn't happened and there are numerous reasons why it will likely never happen. Instead, I think parents need to educate themselves on this "cultural difference" between console gaming and PC gaming rather than just buying their children consoles because they're cheaper when the child's expectations stem from a desire to get into the self-programming side of gaming rather than just playing "ready packaged" games.
I appreciate it!
I'm sorry if you felt that I was passing judgment on you. I wasn't intending that and I can share your pride in your son's setting out to purchase this himself. It is a difficult topic for me in that my family ultimately lost a young loved one who apparently got lured into gaming programming via the internet (starting out doing adhoc modding as a teenager) and unltimately lured away from home to a foreign country where he ultimately became disenchanted by it. Over the past two years, I've seen numerous posts by people who expected the Xbox environment to be the same as the PC in regards to community driven programming opportunities... and it's just not the same. I've seen young people resorting to breaching the TOS on the Xbox in order to do modding on their Xbox and word wars rage here on the forums all the time.
There are, of course, big benefits to encouraging young people to pursue an understanding of programming... and fiddling around with modding games is one way in which they can learn a lot of the skills they'll need if they want to pursue it as a career... and I think it's really great that, on the PC, Minecraft has done so much to give young people the opportunity to mod their game legitimately. However, there are some downsides to the degree of "franchising" that has occurred and also it's just not something everyone can or should pursue. For it to work where everyone finds themselves happy, more people do need to enter into all of this with their eyes open wider... and not expecting the console and PC environments to be able to operate exactly the same way.
There is, of course, somewhere in all of this a "good" middle ground. I believe that the developers of Minecraft on both platforms are working hard and with integrity to find the middle (by doing things like redrafting the EULA agreement for the PC version).
As I said, I'm sorry you interpreted my post as passing judgment on you. It's a difficult topic for me and one I really struggle to write about and project the degree of objectivity that I do feel.
ETA: I should also add just for clarity that the game my loved one was involved with as a teenager was not Minecraft.
As I said, I'm sorry my post lead you to think that I thought you were "one of those parents" when, in fact, because you took the step to come here and ask the question, I firmly understood that you were not one of those. What happened to my loved one was also much more complex that I could ever talk about here... even after many years of healing.
Since you appear to have now assumed (a) that I was the parent of my loved one and that I was "one of those" - You should perhaps know, however, that he was not my son, his mother was a very involved parent but was naive about the world of video gaming, and he worked and bought all of his equipment himself. He was only about 13/14 when it all got started.
The allure of gaming programming is, in many respects, much the same as the allure of Hollywood in days gone by... and some of the most avid dreamers pay an inordinately high price for their dreams. Harsh realities can usually be dealt with somehow by most young people... but first, they have to learn to recognize them for what they are... and consoles are worlds apart from PCs (not better, not worse... just different).