Minecraft: Pocket Edition 0.12

Tasos Lazarides has a huge list of updates to the version of Minecraft for phones and tablets:

These are just a few of the additions in this huge update, and you can see now why I said this update really changes the game up and brings mobile gamers closer to being able to play the full PC game on the go.

It’s 2015 and Mojang is still paying for the mistakes of using Java to develop Minecraft by almost just now coming up to the features of the Java version of Minecraft in this just-updated C++ Pocket Edition.

Cross-platform game development can be easy when you use the right technologies. Java is useful for prototyping. Java is not useful for shipping a truly cross-platform game in 2015. I never thought I’d say this but it feels like Microsoft might just have been the right steward for Minecraft. I’m not sure they have the balls to ditch the Java version entirely and open up a desktop version of Minecraft to modifications and tinkering in the face of whatever backlash it’ll create, but I hope that Mojang, and Microsoft, do it.