'Minecraft' Finally Did Something It Should Have Done Years Ago
One block for me, one block for you.
Minecraft is easily one of the greatest and most recognisable video games ever created. That’s just a fact. Show anybody between the ages of seven and 30 a picture of a Minecraft block, villager, creeper or sword and there’s a high chance they’ll be able to tell you what it’s from. That’s the kind of power most franchises can only dream of.
But what if I told you that Minecraft hadn’t even reached its final form? What if I told you that it wasn’t even fully optimised yet? A scary thought, but a very real one.
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You see, up until now, there have actually been two versions of Minecraft. The Java version, which is the original, and the Bedrock edition, which has been considered the standard version of the game, and was renamed to simply, Minecraft, back in 2017. So what was the difference? Well, a number of things but most notably was that the Java edition allowed for the easy creation of mods within the game.
As of today, though, there is only one Minecraft. Microsoft and Mojang have opted to combine the two editions into one - Minecraft Java & Bedrock Edition. From now on, if you buy one, you’ll get both editions for the price, as opposed to having to buy them separately like before. Fear not though, for you’ll be able to play across editions if, for example, you run Bedrock and your friend runs Java, so nobody is getting left behind.
What’s more, is that anybody who owns either edition already will have their copy of the game upgraded free of charge as an update rolls out over the next couple of days, so you don’t even need to do anything. Wonderful.
In a blog post announcing the news, Mojang stated, "To be clear, Java and Bedrock will remain separate games with their own distinctive features. The only difference is that now you get both by default when buying Minecraft for your Windows PC, and access them both from the same launcher."
All’s well that ends well then. Realistically, it’s kind of strange that it took so long to have the two versions under the same roof considering the size of the game, but here we are in the year of our lord 2022 with the announcement. Regardless, it’s a positive step forward for one of the biggest games of all time.