The rickety old rocket used to shuttle players to the realm of block-based imagination has been retired, replaced by a shiny new vessel better suited to carry the 11 million passengers now visiting Minecraft on PC.
Farewell, brown background texture. Your crude earthiness has kept us grounded these last four years.
The new launcher isn’t all that shiny, actually, though Mojang have every intention of polishing it up. It’s currently grey and boxy, like this:
Bit dull, really. The excitement lies in its feature set: better performance and stability, streamlined updates, increased password security, the distant promise of plugin APIs, and the potential for version switcheroo if you find yourself nostalgic for a younger Minecraft.
You may ‘ooo’ now. Or not. In any case, you’re going to have to download it(for free – you won’t have to buy the game again) if you want to play Minecraft 1.6 or any future updates. The old launcher will be locked at 1.5.2 perpetually.
The new program is self-updating, so there won’t be any need for posts like this in the future. Brr.
Why not have a poke around and let us know what you think?