Minecraft‘s continued success and dominance of the indie game market is showing no signs of slowing down, as its developer, Mojang, has now announced that a retail version of the game will be released on May 16th for the PlayStation 3. Writing on the PlayStation Blog, Chief Word Officer (CWO) Owen Hill made the announcement after revealing that the PS3 edition has been downloaded 1.5 million times since being released at the end of last year.
“Following on the successful launch, we’re pleased to confirm that Minecraft: PlayStation 3 Edition will be available on retail disc starting May 16th,” he said, before adding, “That means you can go into a real-life store, buy it, and then take it home in a little bag.”
PlayStation App users were notified of the news earlier today, and while the release date was originally reported by to be May 14th, it has since been changed to the 16th. Going further, Owen also stated that this disc version of Minecraft will include, “all the features you’d expect from the console versions of Minecraft, along with everything that came with update 14, including Emeralds, Ender Chests, potatoes, and more.”
Talks are ongoing regarding potential Minecraft versions for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita as well, but no further details have been mentioned at this time.
News of a physical copy of Minecraft coming to the PS3 will surely please fans, but is not a huge surprise. The Xbox 360 version was released on May 9th, 2012 and has sold more than 12 million copies so far. 4J, the studio behind the Xbox port, are also responsible for this PlayStation 3 port, and I expect that they will see similar success.
Stay tuned as we’ll be sure to keep you posted on any additional updates that Mojang releases regarding its unstoppable Minecraft train.