Minecraft: Pocket Edition Latest News Update: Major Update To Feature Multiplayer Gaming Across Platforms

By Peter R - 23 Apr '16 14:26PM

Minecraft Pocket Edition has gained immense popularity and is now the top gaming iPhone app in Canada. A major update is expected to take the game to greater heights (and more devices!)

The 0.15.0 update is expected to bring several things new to the game. Realms, a paid service that allows gamers to play others across platforms, is included in the free alpha for android that is available for download.

"Minecraft Realms will support cross-platform play between the iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 editions of Minecraft. We're using Xbox Live logins to make that possible," Minecraft maker Mojang said earlier this month. The pricing is yet to be announced. An Xbox Live Gold subscription is not necessary to play realms, Mojang said.

According to Pocket Gamer which did a roundup of everything that has been teased, taller 256 block worlds and friendly villagers you can trade with are on the anvil in the 0.15 update. Avid gamers are speculating worlds could get bigger but given the resources constraint of mobile devices, it is unlikely that they could get bigger than the 128 blocks featured in MCPE.

New archers, fire charges, and villages that look different are also said to be some of the changes part of the update. Besides Realms, another major update is Command Blocks that help gamers program into Minecraft to make just about anything they want.

Minecraft also released 1.9.3 Pre Release 1 for desktop with four big fixes which promises performance improvements for most players.