Markus Persson, developer of popular indie title
Minecraft, has revealed that the "full version" of the game will be released on November 11 this year.
On his 'Notch' blog,
Persson notes, "It's a bit tricky to really do a release for
Minecraft as we keep updating it all the time. For one, the version we deem as the 'full version' won’t be very different at all from what the game was like a week ago, and we’ll keep adding features after the release as well, so it’s really more of a milestone when we finally get rid of the Beta label, and some kind of goal for us to work towards."
He continues, "The plan is to be open with this and try to get people to cheer us on as much as possible, but to be open with the fact that the game won’t change much at the actual release day. (It’s more a progress up until that point)."
Persson explains that the Mojang team is aware of a number of other game releases on the 11/11/11 date, including
the next Elder Scrolls title Skyrim, and hence has opted for the unofficial
Minecraft tagline "us too."
"It’s the same date as a few other games and movies," he says, "and the one I’m the most excited about is
Skyrim, so that will be a nice reward for me if we actually manage to hit that date!"
Earlier in the week,
it was revealed that
Minecraft has now brought in more than $33 million in revenue from 1.8 million paying customers, despite the fact that the game is still only in beta form.
Persson's company
Mojang is currently also working on a digital card game / board game mash-up called
Scrolls, which was announced last month.
