This makes the pocket and xbox edition experience quite a bit different from the PC/servers version.
My experience was I made a lair basically tunneling out an entire 100x50 ish island, built a tower going up until I was bored and a spiral staircase from top down to bedrock, then dug what amounts to a giant multi-lobed endless loop subway just above sea level around the map (probably about 4 minutes, yes that is indeed a lot of mined/smelted iron, and gold/redstone to boost my cart up to speed) diverted into optimized partially-automated chicken production, then got kinda bored. I think I got about a hundred hours of fun out of it, which, for what it costs, is an excellent rate of return.
It reminds me of an old saying about "second life" from about a decade ago, where if you can't be entranced by it for at least a dozen hours, there's probably something wrong with you, but much after a hundred hours or so, its kind of boring.
A third comparison of about equal depth and entertainment was playing Eve:Online also about a decade or so ago without joining any social groups (which was impossible because I was scavenging random hours here and there, and clans wanted dedicated scheduled mining/raiding nights and such)
All three share the characteristic that its hard to go beyond a hundred or so hours without the community, although if the community drags you in, then you're stuck in there forever.
There's probably a startup lesson in here that if you want more than 100 hours of engagement, its going to come from the community, not the programmers / artists / suits.