In an announcement today, Mojang has indicated that a large number of long-awaited changes are coming to the console editions of Minecraft, bringing consoles a whole lot closer to the Java edition.
The most significant updates are the addition of The End — an entire separate dimension that includes the Ender Dragon and several ingredients that are essential to end-game crafting — and the Elytra, the much sought-after glider that allows players who have beaten all of Minecraft’s structured challenges to explore the world from the skies. The addition of the Ender Dragon also opens up a whole new dimension of potion crafting that relies on Dragon’s Breath (harvested from the dragon’s attacks) giving console players the chance to create throwable potions with lingering effects.
Another cool addition is the addition of the “amplified terrain” world creation feature, which generates a world with much higher highs and lower lows. World generation features have been somewhat lacking on consoles, and opening up more features can only be good.
What’s especially exciting about this, however, is that it’s one of the biggest steps toward feature parity that we’ve seen in a long time. Console players have felt like second-class citizens for a while because of how far those editions have lagged behind the Java edition, but with this update — and a similar one announced recently for the Pocket and Win 10 edition — the gap has closed considerably.
There are still some unknowns at play, like whether or not The End will be as large on consoles as it is on the Java edition (the Nether is not) — but even taking some doubts into consideration, this is a very exciting announcement that could mean big changes for the future direction of Minecraft.
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8 responses to “Minecraft’s Next Update Will Bring Huge Progress To Consoles”
People are still playing Minecraft?
You know how in Overwatch if you type “gg ez” into the chat box it changes it to say something like “Don’t tell mommy I’m up past my bedtime”? Well this site needs the same function, but for whenever there’s a post about a game and some genius posts “People are still playing [insert game here]?”.
Because in the last 24 hours on PC alone, this game has sold over 4,000 copies.
https://minecraft.net/en/stats/
I was being serious. I haven’t heard anyone I know so much as mention Minecraft in years. Not even my nephews who were fanatics play anymore, something I learnt to my detriment when sending them Minecraft themed birthday presents earlier this month
I still play, and some others in my WoW guild play sometimes too. The modded Minecraft scene is pretty big.
Still huge amongst the young folks (6-10?) on console.
My 7-year-old son and most of Year 1-3 at school are all still fully obsessed.
Much easier for parents to control online aspects on console rather than PC too.
Don’t play as much as I used to but it is a good little game to vent out my frustration when coding.
Closed the IDE, load up Minecraft, make a few small dream shacks and get back to work with a calmer head.
I put Minecraft in the same league as Lego; it goes through phases of popularity where for prolonged periods it doesn’t get much attention but in short bursts its better than sliced bread.
And still no joining servers unless they are on your friends list….
I’m pretty sure consoles already had the end.