We’ve known since E3 2017 about Mojang’s plan to bring as many versions of Minecraft as possible into step with one another, but now it’s finally time for the official rollout of the Better Together update. While its most compelling feature, cross-play, isn’t entirely ready, the update is now available to the first wave of players.
On September 19, Mojang’s Aubrey Norris announced that the Xbox version of the update was already live, and that the PC version was set to start winging its way to players on September 20. The Switch update will be ready later this year, but it’s still being perfected at this time.
This means that Switch players can’t currently get in on the fun of cross-play. However, anyone using an Xbox One, Windows 10 PC, mobile device, or even a virtual reality headset to play the game can dive into their friends’ worlds and start building together.
Mojang is introducing oodles of brand-new content to the game as of the update, too. A blog post published on the developer’s website to signal the release mentioned parrots, banners, armor stands, stained glass, and fireworks among the new craftables that can be taken advantage of from here on out.
If you’ve bought Minecraft digitally on any of the platforms included in this update, you’ll automatically be given access to it. However, if you’re using the physical version of the game for the Xbox One, things are slightly more complicated. You’ll need to play the game for more than five hours in the last 12 months before the cut-off date of January 30, 2018, or buy a piece of DLC before that same deadline, to be granted the update for free.
The outlook isn’t quite so bright for anyone hoping to play the latest iteration of Minecraft on the PlayStation 4. It has long since been announced that Sony didn’t sign up to bring this version of the game in line with the rest, and Mojang’s FAQ page about the update states that there’s currently no change to this situation — although the studio “would love to work with Sony to bring players on PlayStation 4 into this ecosystem as well.”
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.