By Time Postillion, Dakota Ridge Senior High School, Littleton, Colorado

All blocky internet miners have another reason to rejoice, as Minecraft, the insanely popular, sandbox survival game has begun to broaden its horizons. New players and fans will be joining in on the gem finding, coal mining, and creeper dodging action as the game will soon be supported on the Xbox 360.

But why will fans choose to play on their console instead of their computers? Minecraft’s creator, Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, must have something in mind to keep the hype up for this huge expansion.

The PC version of Minecraft has 28 million players as of 2012, as few can resist the idea of nearly endless possibilities in terms of what to build. This is not to mention the “mods and maps” that are offered through the online community. It is for this reason why fans of the PC edition of the game are skeptical of the upcoming release.

Many believe that few new players will buy from Xbox Live, because of the separation from the PC community. Players on Xbox would be playing without their friends who play on their computers, or the fantastically creative modifications available otherwise. As far as what’s been revealed about the release, apart from incorporating the PC achievement system into Xbox’s, no new or exclusive content will be brought to the console.

This is not to say, however, that the expansion is without its upsides.

Minecraft is an unusually large game to load, creating a randomly generated world eight times the size of Earth with every new game started. A player with a below average performance computer may not be able to enjoy a stable gaming experience on PC. With every Xbox being of the same system specs as the next, every Minecraft world should be good to go as far as system requirements are concerned.

“The Xbox version is more focused on arcade-y gameplay and doing things slightly faster,” said Notch in an interview for G4, “They’ll probably be tutorials and stuff that makes it easier to play.”

But do gamers, for such an open experience, really want their hands held? It’ll be up to them to decide. Minecraft comes to the Xbox 360 on May 9th, 2012.