Minecraft Unleashes Battle Mode, Realms

The mega-popular game gets some major console news.

Minecraft is sure to be one of the most popular games out there, appealing to a broad audience of gamers.

I’m a huge fan of minecraft and will continue to be if they keep dropping awesome updates. Today’s excitement stems from Mojang announcing that they are now adding “Battle Mode” to all console editions of Minecraft. Battle Mode is a hunger games style pvp online game that allows players to battle it out in a arena online or locally. The theme for this new update is inspired by the pvp mini games that are available to Minecraft players on pc servers.

The update has just been released to console players with three free maps and the option to purchase additional maps for $2.99 a map. Now I don’t quite like the sound of that but that’s another rant for another time. In the meantime, rejoice in this update that is live as you read this.

That’s not all of the awesome Minecraft news. A while back Mojang announced cross platform online gaming in the Minecraft community, and they somewhat delivered with the release of Minecraft on Windows 10. However, that had its restrictions, you could only play cross platform on the same wifi network and only with users who have the same version of Minecraft. For example, only pocket edition players could play with windows 10 players and Ps4 with Ps4.

Now with the release of new Minecraft realms not only can you play cross platform but there aren’t any restrictions. For those who aren’t aware of realms, it’s a service offered by Mojang where a user can have their own server to share with up to 10 other players that is available all the time, even without the host. Realms is available at only $7.99 per month.

To top it off pocket edition players can earn achievements on their Xbox now that Minecraft pocket edition is integrated with Xbox live. How awesome is that! Expect a full review on that soon, in the meantime here’s my pocket edition gamerscore so far.