Minecraft Super Duper Graphics Pack has been canceled
The long-awaited upgrade to 4K graphics for Minecraft fans isn't going to be happening now, unfortunately.
Bad news, Minecraft fans – it looks like the upcoming Super Duper Graphics Pack has been halted in its tracks.
Mojang has pulled the plug on the Minecraft project due to technical demands, which means we won't be seeing it on the horizon any time soon. Originally announced at E3 2017, it was meant to bring 4K graphics to the blocky game, but it appears that the undertaking was causing too many problems for the team to be able to resolve. The reasoning went live in a post on the official Minecraft website.
“We realize this is disappointing to some of you – there was a lot of enthusiasm for Super Duper from inside and outside the studio – but unfortunately, we aren’t happy with how the pack performed across devices. For this reason, we’re stopping development on the pack, and looking into other ways for you to experience Minecraft with a new look," said Mojang.
“Minecraft is available on a wide range of platforms, and we’re constantly trying to make the most of the technical architecture of each one. We’ll be able to share more on that subject very soon. Thanks for your patience, and sorry for not following through on our plans!”
While there are still a wide variety of mods you can use to make Minecraft look like a totally different game, this was a massive update that fans were very much looking forward to. Hopefully there's still something in the works for players who aren't interested in doing DIY mods, but want their game to look shiny and crisp. With attention likely shifted to Minecraft Earth it's doubtful, but we'll see.
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replyBrittany Vincent posted a new article, Minecraft Super Duper Graphics Pack has been canceled
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Guessing they are working on a next gen minecraft or part 2 then?
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The funny thing to me is that what they showed of the Super Duper Graphics Pack just looks like modded Java Minecraft with a middle of the road shader pack (not even one that claims to be doing ray tracing). It just seems like real time shadows, god-rays, some water refraction / reflection and some vertex shaders to make plants / leaves sway in the 'breeze'. Packs like that for Java have existed for years, but perhaps there were issues getting those effects to be performant on consoles on the bedrock version of the game.
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I don't think there has been any evidence that MS knows why they bought the ip or what they are going to do with it. At the rate they are moving they could have just cloned a minecraft game, they didn't need to buy it.
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I remember being mystified that they bought it and then didn't make it an Xbox exclusive, instead actively putting it out on other systems like PS3, PS4, Switch, etc.
In hindsight their platform agnostic strategies make sense.
But yeah it wouldn't be the first time they bought something from someone only to not know what to do with it later.
That said their AR strategy with it seems like it could be a thing. -
I thought it was suspected to be partly a tax thing..they had all this cash in europe that they needed to do something with, and buying the biggest property with kids and teens seemed like the best option at the time.
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I disagree, I think there's plenty to show MS knew exactly what they wanted: a killer IP with 100 million players and growing, and 176 million copies sold on all platforms.
For one, the game (aside from content updates) hasn't changed much at all. To some that may seem like MS doesn't know what to do with it, but they've owned it for 4 years already and it's only grown in popularity each year, so whatever they've been doing for 4 years has worked.
They also didn't make it an Xbox/Windows exclusive, which confuses people who'd assume they would wall it off for hardware sales, but think about that - exclusivity would have severed millions of players from playing with others, costing MS in residual merch sales and income from millions of new MC license sales on other platforms. Instead, they bought the IP when ~50 million copies were sold, and since then they've sold at least 126 million more copies.
MS also knows that any developer can clone Minecraft and likely never get that massive player base that MC has cultivated over the years. They did the smart move and bought the IP outright, and I'm assuming that they've already made their money back at this point.
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