Minecraft Realms brings cross-platform play to Windows 10, iOS, Android, Gear VR

Minecraft—whether it's for iOS, Android, Gear VR, or the version in the Windows 10 store—got a big upgrade today: Realms. Worlds built in the game can now be shared cross-platform, allowing users of the different versions to explore each other's creations.

Lydia Winters and Saxs Persson from the Minecraft team were on hand to show-off "the friendly update," as they called it. Winters demoed the cross-platform experience by playing on an iPad as Pierson jumped into an Xbox Live friends list on a Surface tablet. Soon they were playing together—and id games legend/Doom-creator John Carmack surprised them with a drop-in via Gear VR. "Minecraft Realms lets you play how you want, when you want, on whatever device you want," the duo explained. (They noted that dedicated servers for Realms will let others play with you even when you're not online.)

Later in the year, these new versions of the game will gain support for mods and extensions, such as new skins that replace the zombies with fireball-shooting aliens. These capabilities will also come to the console version in 2017. Winters and Pierson concluded by teasing more information to come at MineCon in September.