Microsoft, who purchased Minecraft and the company who designed it in 2014, is now looking to make the game bigger, better and, more importantly, more unified. The ‘Better Together’ update will allow Minecraft players on most platforms to finally interact with each other. The update is made possible thanks to the Bedrock Engine which is responsible for powering every mobile, Amazon Fire, Windows 10 and VR versions of the extremely popular sandbox game.
The update is scheduled to be released some time in August and will at first concentrate on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch consoles, uniting the vast majority of the Minecraft community. Once united, all players will be able to interact and build worlds together. Another big change that will come from the ‘Better Together’ update is that players will now have unlimited building space, as opposed to the 3 by 3 miles of land they are currently confined to.
But it isn’t certain that the Minecraft community will one day truly be wholly connected. Microsoft can only confirm the update on the Xbox One and Nintendo Switch at the moment and expresses their hope that the update will migrate to mobile devices and computers. What isn’t clear is whether the Playstation 4, Java and Xbox 360 versions of the game will ever be included in the update, and no one seems to know why.
According to Aubrey Morris, Microsoft’s Senior Global Communications Manager, the issue doesn’t reside with them. She said: “We can’t speak for Sony. But as we said, we would love to have our Playstation 4 community join our Minecraft unification plans”. If the problem lies with Sony not wanting to be part of the deal, we can only speculate what its reasons might be. For now, however, it seems like Playstation 4 players won’t be able to take advantage of the ‘Better Together’ update.
The update is only the first step in making Minecraft into a creative platform that could become much more than a game in the future. Already, the Community Marketplace, launched for Pocket and Windows 10 versions of the game in June, has had a huge impact on the transition, allowing players to browse the market in hopes of buying or selling their in-game creations. We bet the marketplace will get busy once the ‘Better Together’ update is complete.