This doesn't surprise me at all. To be blunt, Notch's work has continually been very... half-assed.
I first felt this when I played Minecraft; with successive patches and new added elements, it always felt as if Notch had had an idea, and gone to implement it, and then never bothered to flesh it out or work out the kinks. The Nether and portal system was pretty sorry at release, with basically nothing to do in the nether; rails and carts were always minimal given the possibilities as well as having various non-obvious mechanics that were somewhat frustrating; and so on. I feel you can really see this with the help of the modding community, where often a poorly implemented idea like villages or what not is decently fleshed out by someone who had a strong interest in it.
After Notch stopped working on Minecraft, and even before, there was talk of Scrolls, and the suit with Bethesda; after some time, that sorta fell by the wayside, was eventually handed off to the rest of Mojang, and Notch went to work on 0x10c. And now that, too, has been left in incomplete form.
I dunno whether its a matter of expectations, where the massive fan responses he gets damages his creativity, or if he just loses interest in projects (I have no lack of half-completed works laying around myself) but at this point I'd rather hear about a new project when its close to completion or released, rather than as he develops it.
I first felt this when I played Minecraft; with successive patches and new added elements, it always felt as if Notch had had an idea, and gone to implement it, and then never bothered to flesh it out or work out the kinks. The Nether and portal system was pretty sorry at release, with basically nothing to do in the nether; rails and carts were always minimal given the possibilities as well as having various non-obvious mechanics that were somewhat frustrating; and so on. I feel you can really see this with the help of the modding community, where often a poorly implemented idea like villages or what not is decently fleshed out by someone who had a strong interest in it.
After Notch stopped working on Minecraft, and even before, there was talk of Scrolls, and the suit with Bethesda; after some time, that sorta fell by the wayside, was eventually handed off to the rest of Mojang, and Notch went to work on 0x10c. And now that, too, has been left in incomplete form.
I dunno whether its a matter of expectations, where the massive fan responses he gets damages his creativity, or if he just loses interest in projects (I have no lack of half-completed works laying around myself) but at this point I'd rather hear about a new project when its close to completion or released, rather than as he develops it.