Beginning life on the PC, Minecraft has since appeared on *deep breath* iOS, Android, Xbox 360, Mac, Linux, the Raspberry Pi (!) and, soon, the PS3, PS4, Vita and Xbox One. That’s just about every major platform and manufacturer out there. Oh, except one.
Nintendo.
Despite the smashing success the game has enjoyed on every system it’s appeared on, you can’t get Minecraft on the 3DS or the Wii U, and it never turned up on the Wii or DS.
Why is that?
We asked Mojang back in March and didn’t hear back. This week, Gamespot asked Nintendo themselves, and were told “We’re big fans. We have a continuing relationship with Mojang, and respect all the work that they’re doing, but no announcements at this time.”
If you remember back to March, developers Mojang said that a Wii U version of the game was “very unlikely”.
Comments
16 responses to “The Only Place You Won’t Find Minecraft Is On Nintendo Systems”
Is that like one of those relationships where one person kind of obsesses over the other while she has no idea he even exists?
The 360 controller is awful for Minecraft, yet the touch controls on IOS are absolutely perfect (now).
Seems like it might work well on the Vita with the combination of touch and buttons
Exactly the same situation with the Wii U gamepad, and with off-TV play you’d think it would have happened already.
Is there something. Wrong with you??!?!! Touch screen for a first person game?! what crack rock are you smoking
Are you high? iOS touch screen, virtual controls are better than the 360?
Your inventory on the WiiU screen, just waiting to be equipped with a tap? It’s a missed opportunity.
Minecraft not being on Wii U is down right bizarre tbh. The two are screaming to be married to one another. If Mojang and Nintendo can’t get along, then surely it’s time for Nintendo to make it’s own version of Minecraft.
New-New-New-Super-Mario-Prime-Deluxe-Bros-WiiU-Craft HD
Minecraft can run on anything which can run the JRE [Java Runtime Environment]… hence why it runs on pretty much anything, it’s completely hardware agnostic, so long as there are JRE binaries for the platform.
My home minecraft server runs on FreeBSD, for example.
Nintendo has always been the most closed/conservative of the gaming companies though, so this isn’t entirely surprising. Do they open their platform up to anyone who isn’t using their SDK? What is the indy scene like for nintendo?
Nintendo has completely embraced indies on the Wii U, going so far as to distribute free dev kits and having Unity/Javascript/HTML5 support.
Oh cool! 🙂
I wasn’t suggesting that they didn’t. I sincerely had no idea what their digital ecosystem was like.
If I remember correctly, every version but the PC, Mac and Linux versions run on C++, not Java
It wouldn’t really make sense for the Android version to run C++ when the platform supports Java natively. Other platforms I can understand though.
Yes, this has more to do with Nintendo’s quality standards, They want finalised games on their systems, not ones that need patching every day.
Maybe there’ll be a surprise announcement of an exclusive; Minecraft: The Directors Cut for the Wii U…