Microsoft, the new owner of Mojang, attended this year’s E3 event and announced the new Minecraft: Pocket Edition 0.15 update, which was named “The Friendly Update”. From now on, players will have access to Minecraft Realms – the subscription-based service that will allow them to rent official Minecraft servers, and they will be able to play with their friends who own an Xbox 360 or Xbox One console, thanks to cross-platform play support.
Previous updates for Minecraft already brought support for cross-platform play among PC, Android, iOS and Windows Phone versions, and 0.15 now allows players to join servers along Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles. Another nice addition is the Minecraft Realms integration, which exempts players from hosting games on their devices, in order to allow others to access their shared sandbox anytime, as this subscription-based server hosting service will give them the possibility to rent Minecraft servers. The pricing for Realms servers starts at $7.99 a month, but the first 30 days are free, so players will decide a month later if it’s worth investing money in Microsoft’s servers.
Minecraft: Pocket Edition 0.15 update comes also with new sounds for jumping on blocks (version exclusive); a skins button; a new store button used for buying skin packs and resource packs; Achievements for iOS and Android (version exclusive); Resource packs; a new UI for the main menu and skins menu; Blocks: pistons and sticky pistons; new gameplay involving pig riding with new sound when accelerates (version exclusive), Interact buttons, Boost – used when riding a pig with a carrot on a stick etc.
Items available in the new update are: Raw mutton, Cooked mutton, Fire charges, Spawn eggs, Horse (zombie horse and skeleton horse in version exclusive), Donkey, Mule, and for version exclusive have been introduced Stray, Husk and Wither skeleton horses. Other items are: Name tags, Leads, Carrot on a stick, Tipped arrows made with potion cauldrons (version exclusive), Horse armor made of leather (version exclusive).
Minecraft Pocket Edition 0.15 Update Brings Xbox Cross-platform Play