Minecraft Earth Gets a Staggered Release Starting October

Minecraft started on PC before making its way to every other platform, including the 3DS and mobile devices. And soon the hit sandbox game will be coming to real life as Minecraft Earth releases in public early access later this month.

Minecraft Earth is the title's next mobile game. Using augmented reality cameras and location tracking, it places the world of Minecraft into the real world. Players can travel their local area, collecting blocks, items, and mobs. They can then use these pieces to build their own interactive Minecraft world. Friends can interact with each other's worlds at the same time, either miniaturized or in real life scale.

Announced earlier this year, Minecraft Earth has only been available as a closed beta to participants in select cities, such as London and Tokyo. In a statement made by Microsoft during MineCon 2019, they'll now start unrolling the game out, city by city, until worldwide coverage has been achieved.

We will release in a few smaller markets initially. And once were performing well in those markets, add more and more countries every few days/weeks until eventually were worldwide by this holiday.

A free-to-play game, Minecraft Earth will offer optional microtransactions that will grant the player additional items or building zones, also known as Build Plates in the game.

Meanwhile, PC and console players can look forward to an expanded "Nether Update," a recently announced update to the base game.