If you’ve followed the sad tale of Windows Phone’s decline to near-irrelevancy, you’ll know that, while Microsoft owned both Nokia’s Lumia hardware division and Mojang with their hit game Minecraft, the two were recently estranged rather publicly. If you didn’t know, then we’ll give a quick re-cap and get to the good news.
Minecraft: Pocket Edition, while available on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, has been lagging and believed abandoned on Windows Phone handsets, even though the project and the target OS are owned and maintained by the same company. We heard a bit ago that Minecraft: Pocket Edition on Windows Phone would stop receiving updates and thus be abandoned before it even hit version 1.0.0. Since then’ we’ve heard nothing regarding the beloved blocky game’s fate on Windows mobile handsets. Today, however, Mojang made every Windows Phone owner’s day a whole lot brighter by announcing the game was being updated for devices running Windows 10 Mobile.
In an official blog post by Mojang, the company states that they have “[g]ood news for Pocket Edition players wielding Windows Phones: if you can update your phone’s operating system to Windows 10 Mobile, you’ll automatically receive an upgrade to the Windows 10 Mobile version of Minecraft for free!” The update, which brings the game to version 1.0.3 brings with it Realms functionality as well as the long-awaited Xbox Live integration that allows players to log into and invite Xbox friends to Realms together and earn some more sweet, sweet Gamerscore.
The update maintains the Pocket Edition moniker, but adds in the keyboard & mouse and controller settings sub-menus as well as the Profile sub-menu so Xbox players can manage their Gamertag, account, invitation settings, and toggle the option to use cellular data connections to play online on-the-go. And since the update brings the game to full-release 1.0+, it includes The End, as well as the Elytra wing set along with Ocean Temples, the optional Festive Mash-up 2016 design and world pack and Candy Skin Texture-and-Skin Pack. Finally, for the Minecraft settings nerds and high-end Windows 10 Mobile users, there are ‘Advanced Video Settings’ that, just like the Windows 10 Edition, allow players to customize field-of-view, render distance (in number of chunks), and the toggle to limit world size.
With today’s huge update to Minecraft: Pocket Edition for Windows 10 Mobile, players on the latest phone OS will have access to the latest and greatest features form the team at Mojang. The update is free to download and install, and the game is still available for purchase for $6.99 USD. For the latest on Mojang’s work in Minecraft as well as Minecraft in the Universal Windows Platform on Windows 10, be sure to stay tuned to Rectify Gaming.
Source: Mojang