Mojang’s block party – what is next for Minecraft?

At last week’s Minecon at London Excel, MCV sat down exclusively with Mojang COO Vu Bui to talk about what’s next for the Swedish giant and its runaway success, Minecraft.

Minecon is the annual gathering for all things Minecraft. This year it was held at the London Excel, and was organised by Multiplay of Insomnia fame. Over 10,000 fans attended the show, which broke aGuinness World Record as a result.

Mojang targets new platforms for Minecraft

Minecraft is already huge on mobile, PlayStation, Xbox and PC, but developer Mojang says there are more platforms to come.

And it dismissed concerns that being owned by Microsoft will hinder expansion to other consoles.

If I had my way, we’d be on everything,” COO Vu Bui said.

We want to continue to be available to all players, and that means being on new platforms because everyone uses something different.”

Could that include Nintendo machines?

I’ve never heard a reason why we haven’t ended up on Wii U or 3DS. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

‘Minecon shows what we can do with Microsoft’

Last week’s huge Minecon event proved that Minecraft is in safe hands with Microsoft.

Mojang COO Vu Bui says the firm is happy under new leadership, and that Xbox’s money has helped it expand.

It’s surprising to some, but opportunities have opened up for us,” he said.

Minecon is the first time we are able to show that. We’re all still the same team, now we just work with other teams. That brings us extra resources so we can do things we couldn’t do before.

Minecraft in Education is huge. Mojang is a tiny company, and education is a complex thing. Having that partnership with Microsoft allows us to do things that previously would have been much more difficult.”

‘No limit’ to Minecraft’s education plans

Mojang says it wants to get Minecraft into as many schools as it can.

The firm has already launched the Minecraft in Education programme, which includes a special version of the game. The scheme is designed to help pupils in subjects such as coding, science, history and art.

I don’t really see a limit for Minecraft in Education,” Mojang COO Vu Bui said.

I want to enable people to use Minecraft to enhance education, because people are already doing that. What we want is to inspire it to go further. I guess we’d eventually run out of schools to go into, but there is really no limit.”

‘HoloLens is mind-blowing’

Mojang says that Microsoft’s new AR tech is ‘like being in the future’.

Minecraft was the first game confirmed to being in development for HoloLens, and was shown during an impressive on-stage demo at E3. Fans will be able to take their Minecraft creations and place them in the real world.

All those reviews out there that say HoloLens is mind-blowing and like being in the future are correct,” Mojang COO Vu Bui enthused.