Minecraft Editions
May 25, 2019
To celebrate the new Minecraft Earth and 10 years of Minecraft, I wanted to go down memory lane and revisit all the Minecraft items that I bought, downloaded and installed over the years for my son Aiden*.
First came the Minecraft "Pocket Edition" iPad app (2014), then he got an Xbox 360 gaming console (2015) so I had to buy a Minecraft "Xbox 360" game DVD.
That is two different Minecraft items.
At some point in 2017, Aiden wanted to play Minecraft on the Windows PC because it had a keyboard and many features that the Xbox 360 one didn't. When I saw Minecraft "Windows 10" edition was on sale for $15, I didn't waste any time getting it.
The four-year-old iPad 3 was too slow, so we got an iPad Pro. Fortunately, I didn't have to buy yet another Minecraft as the previous iPad app could be restored at no cost.
At the end of 2017, Aiden could play Minecraft on a touchscreen iPad, with a gaming controller on the Xbox, and keyboard on the Windows PC.
In January of 2018, I got tired of my kids fighting over the new iPad, so we bought a Kindle tablet from Amazon. Yes! I bought Minecraft for the Kindle too.
Shortly thereafter, I made the dumbest move yet when I let Aiden play Fortnite on my Windows PC. The PC didn't have enough horsepower to run modern games smoothly. Fortnite worked but under lower graphics settings which bothered me more than him. Xbox 360 was the best gaming device we had but it was three years old so new games like Fortnite wasn't made to work on it. Doubling down on my dumbest move, I got the latest generation Xbox One S gaming console to replace Xbox 360, so he could play Fortnite in all its glory.
Of course, Microsoft didn't bother to make the Minecraft "Xbox 360" game work on the Xbox One. For six months, Fortnite possessed my son completely and he didn't play Minecraft much. When he did play, it was on the Windows PC. It didn't bother him that he couldn't play Minecraft on the Xbox One. Not yet.
So, Minecraft was available on the Windows PC, iPad Pro, and Kindle, but not on the Xbox One.
The Fortnite fever eventually subsided and he started grumbling about not being able to play Minecraft on the Xbox One. Since giving my son every possible Minecraft option on every floor of the house, on all screens was very important to me, I shelled out $30 for Minecraft for Xbox One edition in early 2019.
With that, he could play Minecraft on the iPad, Kindle, Windows PC, and Xbox One (Xbox 360 was packed away but on standby).
Aiden typically plays Minecraft online with his friends and sometimes with his sister Adele. All the above Minecrafts can connect to each other and join the same "world". It seemed like we had it all covered. He was able to play with everyone: school mates, other friends, soccer & hockey buddies, and online "friends".
A few weeks ago, one of his school mates got a Minecraft "Java" edition. The "Java" edition only connects to other "Java" editions. You can install it on Windows 10, but it is different from the "Windows 10" edition that we have! The "Java" edition players connect to a different world than the Xbox/iPad/Kindle/Windows 10 one. My son can't play with him!
The rest of the story is unwritten.
*my daughter Adele plays too but occasionally.