Minecraft: Wii U Edition

Mojang, the company which created Minecraft, worked with Markus Persson, Microsoft, and port specialist 4J Studios to build a version of Minecraft that was "slightly less advanced" for home consoles. In June 2011, it was announced at E3 that Minecraft would be released on to the Xbox 360. In March 2012, the first console edition was revealed at PAX East for the Xbox 360, as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion. The Xbox 360 Edition was released on May 9, 2012, on the Xbox Live Arcade. On the first day of the game's release, it sold over 400,000 copies; by the fifth day, it hit a million copies sold.

All legacy console editions were developed in C++. In May 2012, senior technology officer Paddy Burns of 4J Studios did an interview with Digital Foundry to discuss the development of the Xbox 360 Edition. Burns said that the main priority was to match all the features available on PC, and that the legacy console editions were created on a strong technical foundation and had considerable scope for improvement. Burns said that the visuals and gameplay are "essentially identical" to the original, with the procedural world generation, lighting and physics engine being "all entirely intact."

Overall, the legacy console editions were received positively by video game journalists. Compared to Java Edition, the early editions were criticized for their small world size and the lack of features from Java.

Critics praised the controls on console. Oli Welsh of Eurogamer said the controls are "taut, fast and logical" and praised the simplified crafting, writing that "It's very handy and eliminates what would have been a cumbersome interface for the Xbox controller, but an important aspect of the game has undeniably been streamlined away here." IGN's Anthony Gallegos of IGN added that 4J Studios "smartly recreated the crafting system," while being faithful to the PC version.