This looks ambitious enough to be met with skepticism. What matters most for gameplay is the UX implementation and AR has serious barriers to overcome in that regard. Holding a device up at eye level for extended periods, interacting with the game by touching the same device that is also serving as the viewport and battery limitations are just a few practical hurdles that have yet to be overcome.
What is really hard to believe is that one can recapture the experience or something close to it and that this is not just the expansion of a brand into a new product. Like Pokemon Go, this will likely be Minecraft's equivalent to the Star Wars Christmas Special but without the "so bad it's good" quality.
The biggest issue I see is building, because builds take a long time and you don't want to stand around using the worst input imaginable (touch screen) to do nice builds.
Other than that, it seems like they're making a Pokemon GO clone with Minecraft mobs (collect passive mobs and fight hostile ones).
W.r.t to your "Pokemon Go::SW Christmas Special" you're absolutely wrong, while the initial popularity didn't stick around, the game is at a very strong and profitable point and the ideas introduced in the GO app have moved into actual Pokemon titles, notable the "no fight, just throw to catch pokemon" mechanic was ported to Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee Switch remakes of Gen 1. Basically the opposite of the SW Xmas Special!
As a (modded) Minecraft player there's a lot to be excited about in this concept, but my suggestions would be
* Allow players to explore the virtual-real-world that they've visited with the phone app from a console or computer. So you can "tag" your local park, a cool bit of a forest, etc, then go home and explore a digital version.
* Allow players to build at home
The point here would be that you go out side, collect building materials, catch some passive mobs you want, then go home to take advantage of these collected goods to start a pretty build.
This would also fix UX issues because the goal of using the phone app would be moving around, collecting, interacting, NOT standing still and building.
I'd play the heck out of that, it'd be another reason to get out of the house and an interaction between phone game and console/pc game could be huge.
> ideas introduced in the GO app have moved into actual Pokemon titles, notable the "no fight, just throw to catch pokemon" mechanic
Which is why I won't be buying the Let's Go series... I might as well be watching TLC reality TV shows all day for all the intellectual stimulation I'm getting out of swiping pokeballs with my finger.
I'm mainly curious as to how team Mojang plans to solve multiple builds in the same location. Ranked by popularity? Swarm mechanics like Niantic?
Idk. I could see myself getting some good wows from this after a few years when the most talented builders have come by and placed some cool stuff. I don't think it's bad, it's experimental tech which continues to break new ground in a game I've enjoyed for a good decade.
Sure, they'll probably bumble it just because this is unexplored space and Daddy Microsoft is at the table, but I think Mojang is just excited to be in a position to try something so interesting.
> Which is why I won't be buying the Let's Go series... I might as well be watching TLC reality TV shows all day for all the intellectual stimulation I'm getting out of swiping pokeballs with my finger.
Wild battles were never especially intellectually stimulating anyway? Even trainer battles are only sometimes of any particular interest beyond grinding, and those are still in Let's Go completely unchanged.
There is significantly more intellectual stimulation in encountering a Pokémon, determining if it is worth capturing (good base stats, rare personality, rare moves, colors, etc), and choosing from a set of capture strategies depending on the circumstance.
Maybe this Pokémon flees if attacked or frightened. That's OK, use Bind with a high-speed starter. Needs a particular status condition? Can't get their health too low? Only a particular grade ball works? Only a special ball made out of fruit by some weird creep in the neck of the woods? They only come out at certain times? You have to track their migration patterns? Hold certain items? Complete certain tasks?
Little to none of these nuances carried over to the Let's Go series in their fleshed-out form. Sure, a lifetime of grinding out wild battles makes them feel a bit stale, but it doesn't mean the nuance isn't there. It just becomes routine for experienced players. These experienced players feel like they have nothing to do or think about when the entire strategy is just repeatedly flicking a Pokéball with their thumb.
Ultimately, design choices like this meant to bring in the casual audience are cheap and non-cognizant of veteran fans. You think Nintendo would have learned from this after failing to recapture most of the transient market acquired during the Wii run once they attempted to usher in the Wii U.
Let's Go still has most of that, or at least a comparable amount to the prior games set in Kanto (which didn't have most of the more-complicated wilds).
You can't tell stats or nature with much detail until after it's caught, but you never could. Move rarity isn't a thing in wild battles in any generation as far as I know; every individual of a species has the same learnset and known-moves for wilds are determined by level. You can see the species and whether it's shiny from the overworld, without going to a battle. There's never, ever been any "only a particular ball works", though some will be more effective, but that's still in Let's Go. Fleeing is almost completely exclusive to a few legendaries, none of which appear in Let's Go. Not sure about whether Let's Go has time-of-day or swarming, but at least in principle there's no reason why it couldn't.
> using the worst input imaginable (touch screen) to do nice builds.
Minecraft's controls for building stuff is very simple - you just point and click to place or remove stuff depending on your active item. Here you can point (via gyroscope, etc) and tap and you could even "scrub" to remove stuff. This could be done with just a hand (the phone in portrait mode, you tap/scrub with your thumb).
One scene in the trailer showed a smaller model on a table; what if they use the Minecraft for mobile's UI to create a model in-game, which you can then place (to scale) in a location?
Do you even play, bro? Building is not performed while standing still, also it is quite finicky. Walking around touching the screen will get old really fast.
I'm not a Minecraft player, but if the intent here really allows you to build your own virtual community together (to see what others are building around you and contribute, etc) that would be pretty fun to play. If you want a bigger screen go to a tablet (spurring a new market for tablet easels I guess)?
Who wouldn't want to put a fortress around your house that everyone on the "inside" could see?
This could also be a pretty great starting application for AR goggles, Magic Leap, HoloLens, etc. Kinda pricey to play Minecraft but bootstrapping via phones isn't a terrible idea and would get the tech in the hands of more people.
All of this is clearly an optimistic interpretation of what could happen, but good on them for trying something ambitious. I hope it jumpstarts the AR future we've all been promised.
One could certainly see Azure as a big beneficiary here. Skepticism is always applicable but it seems like Microsoft has the resources to pull this off. From the point of view of Augmented Reality layers being an important and large business in the future, getting something running at large scale now would be a good idea. Between Magic Leap and Microsoft, I would put my money on Microsoft.
The big wildcard, as others have pointed out, are a bunch of penises everywhere. Very hard to actively moderate.
Yea I'm with you on this. I think the UX of holding a phone to interact with AR is awful. Google glass and some sort of glove or camera on the glass that can recognize gestures is the way to go, a la Minority Report. I've wanted that to take off more as an unobtrusive way record/interact with the surrounding world and layer on top of that AR as needed. I think we'll see more of that going forward as hardware tech continues to advance. Just don't think it's there yet, in a non clunky way, to support that UX yet but it will be
I'm not excited about this release either, but Microsoft is behind Hololens. I imagine that this just needed so ship to stay alive and relevant. The version I would get excited about would be paired with an affordable version of Hololens.
This cant turn out much different than other persistent AR games. They are always too expensive and not very fun for long, without an accessible device to switch living inside the AR smoothly (eg: google glass). This is doa, but is good for making ppl more aware of where AR is....ie the engines have gotten much better at detecting, targeting and discerning surfaces.
What is really hard to believe is that one can recapture the experience or something close to it and that this is not just the expansion of a brand into a new product. Like Pokemon Go, this will likely be Minecraft's equivalent to the Star Wars Christmas Special but without the "so bad it's good" quality.