Someone on YouTube that I'm subscribe to, koba2802, posed a question. Why would the PRE-release Update 1.8, when they've never pre-released any of the previous updates? He had a fairly good take on the situation and basically felt that it may have been to help keep Minecraft interesting, by putting it out over the weekend. All the BIG YouTube Mineraft video makers do their videos on the NEW features, etc.

I have to say its pretty logical thinking. I also want to say however, I believe it may be because the adventure update was so BIG. First they had to split it up into 2 seperate updates. And still there is so much added content, I feel they pre-released it hoping loads of people would try what they already knew would be full of issues, so that they would get a good bug report going on it. Then they have more time to get going on the fixes that are sure to come, and get right back to working on the rest of the Adventure Update that we won't be seeing for a while.

September 11th: Jens Bergensten has revealed why he decided to leak Minecraft Beta 1.8 in a pre-release mode instead of releasing the actual update.

Jens admitted the he has stopped focusing on new features while he removes bugs. He added that he didn' t release Minecraft Beta 1.8 properly on Friday as there are too many bugs .

TWITTER - jeb_ Jens Bergensten: Yes, now it's very tempting to continue working on 1.8 before release, but I will focus on bugs, not new features.

(So possible later than the proposed September 12th release date?)

UPDATE #1: The Beta 1.8 pre-release was distributed over the weekend, and Sept. 13th version 2 was released, which included many bug-fixes. Currently there is no time plan for a full release, Jeb said on his twitter that he is awaiting the results of pre-2. For the most part I believe players are finding far fewers bugs.

UPDATE #2: After looking through the bugs reported so far on pre-2 it is my opinion that if Jeb does anywhere near the amount of work that he did fixing the previous releases bugs, he may have this one ironed out rather quickly. Some of the most severe, crash inducing bugs seem related even, having to do with shift-clicking items.

***********At the time of writing this, I checked to look at the list of bugs again, and I see that the official Update is out! What a surprise, I was just about to speculate that Jeb should have it ready relatively soon.