Minecraft's "Super Duper Graphics Pack" is Canceled

Bad news for all you Minecraft fans out there – the long-awaited (and two years old at this point) graphical overhaul called the “Super Duper Graphics Pack” has formally been canceled by Mojang.
 

“Some of you might remember us announcing the Super Duper Graphics Pack during E3 2017. Super Duper was an ambitious initiative that brought a new look to Minecraft but, unfortunately, the pack proved too technically demanding to implement as planned.

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.”

So the problem, it seems, was that Minecraft was available on too many damn platforms. And while it would be possible – easy, even – to improve this eight-year-old game’s graphics for systems like the PC, Xbox One, and PS4, it would probably be considerably harder for Android devices, Fire OS, the Wii U, or Raspberry Pi. And since Minecraft has generally done a good job at making sure all the versions are the same across all the platforms, I can understand why they would hesitate to make this graphical update specific to only certain platforms.

Makes enough sense. The blog post – which is actually pretty short, I probably could have just copy-pasted the whole dang thing – goes on to say that they will be exploring other avenues to make Minecraft look and feel “new” across all the platforms. Ending with the always-popular “we’ll have more to share real soon”.

I’m sure this is disappointing for many fans, but the great thing about Minecraft is that it never really needed good graphics anyway. It’s still lots of fun just the way it is.