Minecraft 'official' release date announced

Yesterday, Minecraft's creator Markus "Notch" Persson let slip how staggeringly rich his indie PC hit Minecraft has made him. Today, he's revealed that the game officially releases on November 11 this year (11/11/11).

However, Persson himself contends that this means very little in the grand scheme of things; Minecraft's beta stage has, effectively, been much like a full-fledged game with continued updates and support, and this will not change once the game is released.

"The 'full version' won't be very different at all from what the game was like a week ago, and we'll keep adding features after the release as well, so it's really more of a milestone when we finally get rid of the Beta label," explained Persson on his official blog.

Also in his blog, Persson has shed some light on the upcoming updates to version 1.5, such as achievements, statistics, snow, rain, lightning and thunder.