Minecraft Realms makes cross-platform play on Windows, iOS, Android, and VR a reality

No matter what your preferred platform for Minecraft is, your favorite block-happy sandbox just got a massive upgrade (well, unless you’re on a console, but we’ll get to that). Realms has arrived, and that means you can now share worlds across many versions of Minecraft: whether you play on iOS, Android, Gear VR, or Windows 10.

Lydia Winters and Saxs Persson of the Minecraft team demonstrated the long-awaited “friendly update” at Microsoft’s E3 event. Winters played on an iPad and Persson was using a Surface tablet, but soon the two teammates were in the same world, building and battling together. John Carmack, the legendary creator of Doom, swung by to visit them on his Gear VR. Users can freely hop into each other’s worlds regardless of platform, and securing a dedicated server is only $4 per month.

This is an exciting development for Minecraft, as users have long been limited in terms of who they could play with due to platform differences. The “friendly update” is aptly named indeed, because the number of people you can craft and mine with has just skyrocketed. The update comes just in time for some additional widespread changes coming to Minecraft, as fully integrated mod support will be finally arriving this fall. Unfortunately, Console versions of the game have been left out in the cold in both respects, but these features are slated to arrive sometime in 2017 with additional news forthcoming this September at MineCon.

What are your thoughts regarding Minecraft Realms? Let us know in the comments below!