It's official: Minecraft is heading to the Oculus Rift next week, making the day of every owner of the virtual reality headset out there.
The news comes from none other than Tommaso Checchi, a developer over at Mojang. He took things to Twitter, spreading the word of the anticipated update.
PSA: unsurprisingly, promised dates change :)
We said that Rift support would be in 0.15.6, but it will be out next week instead!— Tommaso Checchi (@_tomcc) August 11, 2016
As everyone can see, Oculus support is going to land on version 0.15.6, and in other words, the Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta.
Needless to say, the Microsoft-owned developer already has it up for grabs at the official website via the log-in portal, providing fans with instructions on how to download it from the Windows Store. It's free of charge for users who already has Minecraft for PC or Mac in their arsenal.
To keep the details short, players just have to key in their credentials, click on the Redeem button on their account pages, sign in to their Microsoft accounts and breeze through the other instructions. After all that, it'll now be available via the Windows Store.
However, it's still unclear whether or not it'll remain free after the Oculus update goes official.
Now it should be mentioned that even though the platform plus the game seem like the perfect match, it still took a couple of years before it could finally start happening. Here's what went down: Markus "Notch" Persson first pitched the idea of combining the two, but when Facebook picked up Oculus, he had to put a stop to things, noting that Facebook "creeps him out."
This goes without saying, but Microsoft already greenlit the project to materialize.
On an interesting note, Minecraft: Gear VR Edition for the Samsung Gear VR — obviously — went live back in April. That coupled with the Oculus support deal show that Minecraft is invading VR platforms everywhere, and it's probably because of its incredible popularity, where it reached a milestone of selling more than 100 million copies.
To boil things down, it's safe to expect a huge update between now and Aug. 19, Friday, so get those VR headsets ready for some good ol'-fashioned gaming sessions.
Are you as excited as we are to bash in skulls and build a world in a VR version of Minecraft via the Oculus Rift? If so, feel free to drop by our comments section below and let us know.
