Minecraft - cross platform gaming!

On September 20th a large update was pushed out to many versions of Minecraft, regardless of the device. Even the Xbox One got a completely new release with a free upgrade for anyone with the 'Xbox one edition'

Three versions of me, in the same room. Terrifying.
Viewed from the Xbox One




Called the "Better Together" update, this aligns the functionality and enables achievements and multiplayer compatibility between the platforms.

This is pretty epic. It means someone on the Xbox One can be playing the same minecraft LAN game as someone on a PC or an Android and so on.

I thought I would test it. So I loaded up my world on my laptop, set it to multiplayer and the went on to connect to it from my old Android phone and the Xbox One.

I was expecting glitches or something but it was absolutely seamless, even picking up the costumes on the characters of each version.  The map was perfect, although I'm not sure why I thought it wouldn't be - and I could pass objects from one version of me to another. 

Interestingly, I was logged into Xbox Live as the same login on the Xbox and my PC, and that didn't seem to matter, and not logged in to Xbox Live at all on my phone, which again, didn't matter at all.

More Me.  This time viewed from my old Samsung Galaxy S3 ! 

There's more to investigate here, but I strongly believe this kind of cross-platform interaction is the way of the future - eventually it shouldn't matter what device you use to connect to your multiplayer game. 

Once step further towards Oasis! 

(If you haven't read Ready Player One, that will mean nothing to you)



Slightly related to my previous article on "Krazy Kart Racing - Cross platform multiplayer" in 2010!

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