On Friday you’ll be able to play Minecraft on Wii U, which is something a lot of people thought might never happen, but hey, we’re here.
This afternoon I spent a few minutes poking around in a Nintendo-provided copy of the game, and it runs great both on a television and mirrored on the GamePad. This Wii U version of Minecraft has solid controls — the ZL and ZR triggers let you activate and break things, respectfully — and seems to perform well, from what I’ve tested.
I can confirm, based on this extensive testing, that Minecraft Wii U will still let you A) punch villagers; B) get killed by zombies while you’re paused because you’re accidentally playing in an online world; and C) dig a hole as far down as possible until you hit bedrock and then spend a solid 30 minutes googling “destroy bedrock cheats” until you give up and turn off the Wii U.
I must confess, though, I would have loved to see Mojang take advantage of the touchscreen to make inventory management a bit better. Right now you can use touch controls to select items on the bottom of the screen during regular gameplay and while you’re crafting new objects, but you can’t use it to sort your inventory, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.
All that said, this is a perfectly fine version of Minecraft, and if you’re willing to dish out the cash for yet another version of the stellar digital LEGO game — or if you’ve never played it before and want to try on Wii U — this is a good way to go.
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10 responses to “Minecraft Runs Just Fine On Wii U”
It’ll be fascinating to see how this will sell.
I’m assuming MS have done the maths before deciding to put one of their games on a competitors console. It should be a massive hit, Minecraft was a huge success on the 360 and the WiiU is probably the more natural fit.
Microsoft seems to be giving their various divisions more autonomy to pursue strategies that won’t necessarily help other divisions.
It probably would help the Xbox hardware division if Mojang ceased development of the PlayStation, Wii U, Android, iOS, etc versions of Minecraft and stopped selling them. However it’d make Mojang itself less profitable.
Windows would be more desirable if you couldn’t use Skype on other platforms. Skype itself benefits from having the largest possible user base though, due to network effects and the fact that a fraction of the user base will pay for premium services.
Similarly, the fact that you can use Azure as a host for Linux virtual machines probably doesn’t do any favours for the Windows Server guys, but it probably gets the cloud services division more revenue.
I’ve always wanted to be able to show respect while I break things in video games.
First you smash it. Then you buy it dinner.
isnt it normally the other way round?
I was going to get it on Wii U until I found out they’re not using the touchpad for inventory.
I would have as well.
It’s a lost sale, unfortunately, because despite owning it on two other platforms I would have been happy to shell out for a third if I could move things in and out of my active slots with my finger.
Ah well.
Any word on world size? I’ve only played on PC and am a bit worried about this. Is it smallish? How long does it take to walk from spawn to the end of the map? Does it just end at nothingness?
Apparently is smallish. Same size as 360/PS3.
I already had this on PS4, but I tend to prefer the kids use the Wii U so I grabbed it.
Thoughts:
– It works fine enough.
– If you only have a Wii U… or don’t like pocket edition… or have a PC but want to play on the TV (or co/op)… then yay for Minecraft!.
– The draw distance is not as good as PS4
– The GamePad is only used in single player and only as a mirror of the TV
– Playing co/op requires the GamePad screen off.
– Framerate in co/op was ok but a drop down from single player
– Network features are free, unlike PS4
– $40 AU is too much (I got the PS4 version for $19)
I have a little bit of buyers remorse… but I mainly got it for the kids to play while I play PS4 or something.