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Will Project Spark be Microsoft’s Minecraft?

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 8 min

With its Project Spark creation game, Microsoft has a big opportunity to capture the imagination of gamers and bottle it. If it succeeds, Spark could build for Microsoft a user-generated community akin to the phenomenally popular block-building title Minecraft — if it strikes the right balance.

Players will be able to use Project Spark to design their own game characters, worlds, and virtual objects. It has to be easy to use so that anybody can create, but it also has to be deep and flexible enough so it doesn’t limit creativity. Microsoft will soon find out what happens when it turns over the keys to the car to its gamers. The open beta test is live today.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.