Mojang CEO Carl Manneh has told Edge that the Minecraft dev has three new projects in the work, two of which could see release in the first half of 2012.

The first of those projects is a new game from the hat-loving, SOPA-hating Markus "Notch" Persson, who recently stepped down from his long-time position as Minecraft's development lead. According to Manneh, the title is still in its experimental infancy.

"What it is today, I don't think he knows himself," he explained. "We certainly don't. It's probably going to be a lot of testing and playing around to see what works.

According to Manneh, the other two projects are much further along, but Mojang can't spill the beans just yet due to non-discloure agreements with unnamed "companies". That could mean that Mojang is acting as publisher for a third party title, much as they have with Cobalt, or that they've developed a game in-house and shopped it around with larger publishers for release on other platforms.

Whatever the case may be, Manneh says these mysterious games will definitely be announced — and potentially even released — by the middle of the year.