As the best selling game of all time, Minecraft really doesn't need any other versions, releases or copies to boost its numbers. Whether you play on Java or Bedrock, it's a game that will need no introduction to almost all of you and it's showing no signs of massively slowing down in popularity despite its age.
That said, there are some interesting relics from its history which are worth talking about, particularly when we think about what might have been in an age where technology has come so far.
One of those is Minecraft HoloLens, which was originally revealed all the way back in 2015 and showed off some incredibly exciting technology that was never quite fully realised. With how far we've come since, it really does feel like a missed opportunity, and one that we would love for the developer to revisit in the near future.
Minecraft HoloLens Was One of the Most Impressive Demos of 2015
If you’re understandably too young to remember everything that happened in 2015, Minecraft HoloLens really did take the world by storm when it first showed off the potential of its technology.
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Essentially functioning as an augmented reality version of the game, it allowed you to don some of the trademark goggles that we still use today, in order to build your own blocky creations in your own home or outside in the park or on the street.
Though it was never officially totally cancelled, the team behind it actually moved on to what ended up being the HoloLens 2, which was then given to the military to train troops, in a slightly dark turn.
Over on Reddit, in a post asking what happened to the tech, the comments were full of fans and players who were arguing over whether what was shown was ever truly viable for the game.
“HoloLens, although it looks great in the trailer, what it actually looks like in reality is a tiny square in the middle of the headset that displays the augmented reality parts. Think of a VR headset but the field of view is like 15 degrees,” one sceptical comment read.
“I was also keen to play Minecraft on one when they announced it. We were given a Hololens at work to set up before we gave it to construction students. They took it out of the case, used it for all of an hour and promptly smashed it. Can’t get a replacement part and we weren’t prepared to pay for another one,” another unfortunate comment read.
With the move away from augmented reality more generally, it’s likely we’ll never get to see it. It’s still nice to think about what might have been though.