Both versions will be playable on Windows 10 and 11, along with supporting cross-play with other platforms including mobile devices. They’ll both be available in a single launcher, allowing players to choose the one they want to go with. Minecraft: Bedrock Edition is the more stable release and better suited for cross-platform play but the Java Edition allows for deeper modding and comes with Hardcore mode.

Having both options will thus be great though it remains to be seen if the Java Edition will support cross-platform play as well as the Bedrock Edition. Minecraft is currently available on pretty much every platform, from Xbox One, PS4 and PC to Nintendo Switch, iOS, Xbox 360, Android and PS3. Stay tuned for more details on its Game Pass launch in the coming weeks.

So when the Switch OLED was finally revealed with its built-in LAN report, new wide and adjustable back-stand, 64 GB internal storage and 7 inch screen, the lack of mention for any performance improvements was sobering. Nintendo further confirmed that the console didn’t have a new CPU or more RAM, remaining pretty much the same as its predecessor.

A more powerful Switch has been one of the bigger demands from fans over the years. It was obvious before the console’s launch that it was nowhere near as powerful as the Xbox One or PS4, let-alone their upgraded counterparts. The games were and continue to be top-notch and Nintendo still has plenty of exciting projects on the way, be it Metroid Dread or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s sequel. One could compare this upgrade to Apple’s latest iteration of the iPhone or iPad, except more than four years later and with nowhere near the amount of substantial changes.

That being said, it makes perfect sense why Nintendo went this route. Take a quick peek at the Switch hardware sales – it’s sold over 84.5 million units worldwide as of May 2021 and regularly tops hardware sales in the United States, Europe and Japan. It’s still receiving strong software support and Nintendo has only just hit its stride with regards to indie offerings. A refresh, no matter how minor, is easy money for the company.

Nevertheless, it leaves a bad taste for multiple reasons. When Super Mario 3D All-Stars was released and touted to be available for a limited time to purchase, the ensuing FOMO helped it sell 9.01 million copies as of March 31^st 2021. Given the minimal changes made to the ports, it was a great way for Nintendo to artificially push demand and earn heaps of revenue. Titles like Metroid Dread and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD have accompanying amiibos which grant actual in-game benefits. Both titles are likely going to sell well so why not earn a little more on the side from amiibo sales? It makes sense, even if it is kind of shady.

The Nintendo Switch OLED is in the same boat especially when since the base Switch model isn’t getting a price reduction. It’s a pretty ingenuous strategy – the question isn’t whether the OLED model is worth $50 more or not but why you’d continue to pay for the same hardware when you could get it with a few new bells and whistles for a little extra. It’s the embodiment of The Simpsons’ “But she’s got a new hat!” moment.

Some fans may argue that this is par for the course for Nintendo which released several iterations of its handhelds over the years. Back in the day, there was the Game Boy Advance SP with a rechargeable battery and back-lit display…and then Nintendo released the AGS-101 model, which was the exact same but offered two brightness settings. And who can forget the lack of a headphone jack in the GBA SP, which necessitated purchasing special headphones or an adapter for extra? The Game Boy Advance sold 81.48 million units worldwide as of June 30^th 2009 and the GBA SP made up more than half that number so again, great business sense from Nintendo.

Of course, it’s worth noting that the Nintendo DSi was a significant improvement over the regular DS and released four years after the base model. It had a better processor, four times as much RAM and more storage. The New Nintendo 3DS followed roughly the same pattern, releasing more than four years later in the US after the base version and having a significantly better processor and more RAM. We’ll come back to this in a bit but both handheld lines were very successful, selling tens of millions of units.

As for the Switch OLED, things get even more intriguing when you consider the rumored Switch Pro. It’s apparently still a thing, completely separate from the Switch OLED. VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb has been hearing that it will release in 2022 and have a more “efficient chip.” Dr. Serkan Toto believes that the new model appears more like “an interim model” than a proper upgrade. “This might just be a dummy upgrade until Breath Of The Wild 2 is ready and the component shortage is over next year,” he said on Twitter. One may dismiss any rumors about the Switch Pro at this point but this does make the most sense given how recent events have impacted the world over the past year.

You could argue that expectations for the Switch OLED are mismanaged because of the rumors – Nintendo never said it was working on a more powerful Switch so why should people be upset? It’s never been one to compete with the likes of Sony and Microsoft in terms of power. But if you look back on the history of the Nintendo DS and 3DS, it absolutely has offered more powerful hardware with its refreshes. Given the number of different models for both handhelds, whether its Lite versions, XL version, “New” versions, the Switch’s release pattern becomes a bit familiar.

Granted, Nintendo hasn’t released a major hardware refresh only one year after a minor one – even the New Nintendo 3DS launched three years after the 3DS XL and two years after the 2DS in the US. Maybe it wanted to launch the Switch Pro alongside the Switch OLED this year itself but component shortages forced a delay.

Taking all this into account, the Switch OLED will release this year, make a lot of money – both off of current Switch owners and new ones – and then Nintendo could roll out the Switch Pro next year for even more returns. One could also see the older Switch slowly being phased out while $350 becomes the new entry – a price reduction could happen but looks very unlikely at this point. Again, it’s the best scenario business-wise but from a consumer point-of-view, charging for a new Switch model this year and then again next year for the Switch Pro feels kind of scummy.

At any rate, even if a proper Switch Pro isn’t in the works, the Switch OLED indicates that Nintendo is more than happy for fans to pay for the same performance they’ve been experiencing since 2017. It’s also satisfied with the current status quo where some titles struggle to maintain a solid frame rate or offer resolutions higher than 900p (and in some cases, 720p). When it’s worked out so well in terms of sales, you have to just ask: Why not? Nevertheless, looking at the heated discussions about cross-gen titles and when games on the Xbox Series X and PS5 will start having those “next-gen visuals”, it’s funny to see Nintendo firmly planted in the previous generation, proudly boasting about its new hat.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

It’s in the tradition of pretty much all Nintendo portable systems in the past – the Gameboy got Gameboy Color, the DS got DSi, and the 3DS got the New Nintendo 3DS (that was its real name). And while it’s a concept that PlayStation and Xbox both embraced with the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X, it seems like the Switch Pro (we’re sticking with that one till the official name inevitably requires us to call it something else, and presumably something much stupider) will be more along the lines of the old Nintendo handheld upgrades than the console ones.

We can say this because of what the reports that have leaked this system’s existence have told us – these reports have told us of a fairly massive upgrade over the existing Switch system, with a fairly thorough modernization of its capabilities and specs, compared to the more conservative PS4 Pro, for example. These rumours also claim that, unlike the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, which were not permitted to ever have any exclusives – meaning that while games could look and run better on them, they would have to run on base consoles all the same – the Switch Pro will in fact be allowed to have those. In fact, it also sounds like at least a few ones from third parties may even be in the works, games that otherwise wouldn’t work on the Switch.

This all seems to be in line with the kind of upgrades we have been told the Switch Pro will have, which allegedly include major bumps to the SoC’s CPU cores and GPU capabilities, as well as memory bandwidth, thanks to a new chip that is rumoured to be based on the newer, cutting edge Ampere or Turing architectures. More importantly, the Switch Pro is also rumoured to include Nvidia’s vaunted DLSS 2.0 technology, which allows for image upscaling and reconstruction using machine learning, and very often delivering better than native rendered images for very little in the way of performance costs, thanks to specialized hardware. All of this stuff is supposed to make the Switch Pro a hefty update – for example, we know it will support 4K resolutions, though it appears more via DLSS than natively, to be fair. And none of this accounts for other exciting components of the systems that have also been leaked, including a larger OLED screen (versus the current 6.2 inch LCD one), as well as presumably better battery life thanks to a more efficient node for the SoC.

Hefty hardware upgrades, superior construction, and at least some exclusive software make the Switch Pro more than just a simple PS4 Pro style upgrade – while it’s not a full fledged next generation successor, these would bring the Switch Pro closer to that than a PS4 Pro style incremental step up would have been. There’s a reason I specifically invoked the Nintendo handheld upgrades, because, as mentioned, the Switch Pro seems to be following in their footsteps more than in PlayStation or Xbox’s.

The difference is that having substantial upgrades for cheaper handhelds that had been made with fairly obsolete tech to begin with is a fundamentally different proposition than what we are looking at with the Switch. It was easy for Nintendo to have a Gameboy Color that was a major upgrade over the Gameboy, while still being extremely cheap. It was very easy to have a DSi or a New 3DS that provided a substantial improvement over the base systems, while still being priced very similarly. But the Nintendo Switch was not made using cheap or outdated technology. While more console-minded players may often like to sneer at its relatively more limited capabilities, the Switch was using some of the most modern SoC tech available in 2016-17 at mass market prices. Many will probably point to their $1,200 iPhone or Galaxy S and say how it outperforms the $300 Switch – which it should! But that comparison is as facile as is comparing a $2,500 PC to a $500 PS5, and then laughing at the PS5 for being weak in comparison. At those prices, you’re getting some of the best tech there is.

With the Switch already being such modern tech, then, profit margins on it were slimmer. In and of itself, this isn’t really an issue – there was definitely high markup on accessories such as the Joycon controllers (which keep drifting, so you’re probably buying a fair few of them), and Nintendo game prices, as well as increasing digital revenues, have all helped make Nintendo have the single most profitable period any console manufacturer has ever had with the Switch. But the hardware itself, that’s probably harder to iterate on while maintaining profit margins, and keeping it in the same price range as the current Switch, which is generally how their previous portable upgrades have gone. So how do we reconcile that with the seemingly fairly ambitious sounding upgrade the Switch Pro is rumoured to be?

The simple answer here is that the Switch Pro will probably be expensive. By a fair bit over the current model, actually. While putting it in a whole different tier of pricing will be counter to how Nintendo has done things in the past, the Switch is not marketed or positioned as a portable, it’s positioned as a console. And the entire concept of more expensive upgrades is far more commonplace now than it was back in the time of the Nintendo DSi, thanks to annual smartphone and tablet upgrades, or even the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. By allowing themselves to hit a higher price, Nintendo presumably leaves itself more room to make the Switch Pro more capable than they would have been able to make under their older paradigm as well.

How expensive? That’s the (blank hundred dollar) question. There are several routes the company can take here. The first one is to have the Switch Pro take the current Switch’s $299 slot, while pushing the current model down to $249 (or discontinuing it); this, however, feels unlikely. As specified, the Switch Pro seems to be far too ambitious an upgrade to be able to hit a $299 price point while maintaining the kinds of profit margins on hardware Nintendo likes maintaining. Moreover, the same reports that have leaked the system’s existence have mentioned repeatedly that Nintendo is looking at pricing it in a higher tier than the current model.

So let’s go with that option for a second – it’ll be priced higher. Here, too, we have two possibilities. The first is that the Switch Pro takes a $399 price, while the current Switch retains its $299 price, and the Switch Lite keeps its $199 price. $399, however, would make the Switch Pro the most expensive hardware Nintendo has ever put out. It’s actually eye waveringly expensive, and puts it on par with the PS5 Digital Edition, and more expensive than the Xbox Series S. Then again, similar comparisons with the then-current PS4 and Xbox One never held back the original Switch, which was priced equal to the PS4 and Xbox One as well. There’s a possibility Nintendo may feel comfortable with this pricing model for a variety of reasons:

• It keeps things simple, clearly delineating and communicating an entry-, standard-, and premium-level tier to customers;
• $399 gives them higher profit margins than trying to keep the price similar to the current model would net them;
• Switch pricing relative to other consoles has not been an impediment to its success, as mentioned already;
• They probably feel comfortable with a higher price because of their understanding that the Switch Pro is aimed at a smaller niche, and their mass market movers will still be the standard and Lite models;
• It allows them to maintain the $299 and $199 pricing for the Switch and Lite respectively, which Nintendo really seems to be a fan of doing (because believe it or not, over four years in, the Switch has not received a single price-cut, the longest a system has ever gone in history without one).

This confluence of reasons makes this pricing model seem the likeliest. However, there is a chance that Nintendo chooses to keep that model, but with lower price points, in order to maintain some of their traditional price appeal with family friendly segments even with the more expensive Pro. In which case, I can see a Switch Pro coming in at $349, the standard Switch being dropped to $249, and the Switch Lite being dropped to $149. This model is essentially the same as the previous one, just with lower prices. It ends up retaining the elegant separation of tiers that that model has, although it does end up cutting into their profit margins across the board. Simultaneously, however, $349 is a more marketable price than $399 is – core, enthusiast players are likelier to buy a Switch Pro at a price where its cheaper than the PS5, even if it’s not by much, while that same price is also likelier to catch a lot of family purchases that may otherwise have not even considered the Pro and may have stuck with the standard model.

Simultaneously, dropping the prices of the standard and Lite models ends up opening those to a whole new demographic as well. The Switch Lite is actually extremely cheap at $199, but it’s still really expensive for a portable system, and $199 portable systems have traditionally been under performers compared to their cheaper counterparts. You have to assume that at $149, the Switch Lite can tap into a far bigger audience, particularly one that just wants to play, say, Pokemon or Animal Crossing, thus leading to substantially higher sales and revenue for Nintendo as well. Of course, $249 for the standard Switch helps it too – it’s a much more appealing price than the system’s current one, and again, more are likely to pick it up at that point than right now (not that the Switch has struggled to sell at its current asking price either, of course).

Here’s the thing, it’s hard to know what Nintendo will do. Not only are they a notoriously unpredictable company, but we’re in uncharted territory as far as the Switch Pro, and even the Switch itself, go. There are also a lot of variables at play, which make trying to divine any answer with any degree of certainty an exercise in futility. I don’t feel comfortable to committing to any specific prediction, other than saying that I feel like the Switch Pro will be priced much higher than the standard model – by how much, it remains to be seen. I’m personally a fan of the three tier pricing model for the Lite, standard, and Pro, separated by $100 each, but even that allows for a lot of variation (will the Pro be $399? $349?), and, again, is more down to my aesthetic preference for its symmetry more than anything else. 

It’s impossible to know what Nintendo is planning – assuming the Switch Pro is real to begin with (which, remember, officially it’s never been confirmed). Whatever they end up doing, presumably ends up going down well – with the Switch, Nintendo has exhibited uncanny business acumen, and the console is currently on a trajectory to end up as one of the highest selling systems of all time, and well above the PS4 or Wii ever managed. We’ll know soon enough, presumably by August or September at the latest, what, if anything, Nintendo has planned.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Back in 2017, Mojang unveiled something ambitious for Minecraft – the Super Duper Graphics Pack. This update, which was originally scheduled for Fall 2017, was meant to revamp the game’s visuals. Heck, it would even support 4K resolution on the right platforms.

Unfortunately, Mojang’s silence on the update ever since has been leading to the inevitable – development on the Super Duper Graphics Pack has stopped. This is because it was fairly demanding and the developer didn’t like the performance across different devices. “Super Duper was an ambitious initiative that brought a new look to Minecraft but, unfortunately, the pack proved too technically demanding to implement as planned.”

Noting that it wasn’t “happy with how the pack performed across devices,” Mojang said, “For this reason, we’re stopping development on the pack, and looking into other ways for you to experience Minecraft with a new look.” While it is disappointing that the update didn’t pan out, it’s not like Minecraft’s popularity is suffering as a result. As of May 2019, it’s sold over 176 million units in its lifetime across multiple platforms and enjoys a thriving community.

Other ventures are also on the way for Minecraft like Minecraft Earth, a Pokemon GO-like title where you can place your own creations in the real world. There’s also Minecraft: Dungeons, an overhead action RPG with loot akin to Diablo that’s out in Spring 2020.

Mojang’s Minecraft has always been a big deal. It’s had tens of millions of players for years and seen numerous updates. To the surprise of perhaps no one, it’s also sold an extraordinary amount. Microsoft and Mojang  have confirmed that over 176 million copies have been sold worldwide since the game fully launched in November 2011.

Also, the game’s free release in China has over 200 million registered users. With over 30 million units sold on PC alone, the popularity of Minecraft is simply incredible. It’s available on just about every platform you can think of, from Android and iOS to PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch (even Fire OS and Windows Phone).

Minecraft has tons in store for the future. Along with updates and new content, a new AR game called Minecraft Earth is coming to iOS and Android. Mojang is also working on Minecraft: Dungeons, an action adventure dungeon crawler that’s out later this year for PC. Stay tuned for more details on these releases in the coming months.

Mojang’s Minecraft isn’t just rolling – it’s been rolling for a long time now. The company’s momentum hasn’t slowed down since Microsoft acquired it in September 2014 for $2.5 billion. In speaking to Microsoft’s head of Minecraft Helen Chiang, Business Insider revealed that the game has over 91 million active monthly players and 150 million copies sold in its lifetime.

The developer is looking to diversify into new experiences, like the recently announced Minecraft: Dungeons. However, Chiang is adamant about not having a true sequel. “I really don’t think that makes sense for Minecraft, given the community. It’s something that always fractures the community.”

Chiang says that keeping the community together is a core philosophy, even when it comes to how the franchise expands. “The way that we’ve decided to expand – and I think ‘Dungeons’ is the first example of that – is a way that we’re trying to keep our community together.

“That’s why our updates our free. We don’t want to ask [players] to move from ‘Minecraft 1’ to ‘Minecraft 2.’ We want them to just enjoy ‘Minecraft.’ And there’s other ways that we can expand that are more meaningful and authentic to what we want to be, rather than just releasing another iteration in the way that most other franchises do.”

On top of that, creative lead Jens Bergentsen – who’s worked with Mojang as a designer and programmer since December 2010 – succinctly expressed why a sequel is unnecessary. “I don’t think there’s really a need for ‘Minecraft 2’. You would be able to create a ‘Minecraft 2’ game in ‘Minecraft.’”

Minecraft: Dungeons, which is a dungeon crawler being handled by a “small and dedicated” team, will be releasing in 2019. It will head to PC first, with no details on console versions (yet).

Until yesterday, Sony was sitting out of the cross platform play party of their own volition. With that having changed now, however, the floodgates are open, and several games that have cross platform play for the Xbox One and Switch versions, but not for the PS4 version, could now be fully unified.

One of these games is Minecraft, which saw its “Better Together” update bring together the Switch and Xbox One userbases (not to mention iOS, Android, and PC ones) in a big way earlier this year. Now that Sony seems to be more open to cross platform play, could this Better Together update come to the PS4 version of Minecraft as well?

Microsoft certainly thinks so. Speaking to Windows Central, the company gave a promising response when asked about the possibility of that happening, while being sure to not to commit to anything specifically.

“We believe in giving gamers the opportunity to play the games they want with the people they want,” they said. “Whether that means working with our partners to deliver cross-network play with games like Rocket League and Fortnite or enabling cross-device play with the likes of Minecraft, we are supportive of new scenarios that enable more people to play and have fun together while gaming. We would love to bring players on PlayStation 4 into our Minecraft ecosystem as well, but have nothing further to share at this time.”

Hopefully, this will end up happening— imagine a version of the infamous Better Together ad, but this time with all three consoles!

Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn was announced during the last Nintendo Direct as a 3DS port of the original fantastic Wii game. Though the game will lose a bit of its beauty in being shrunk for the lower resolution 3DS screen, it did make sense that Nintendo is doing it anyway- porting older games seems to be an easy way to service the 70+ million 3DS install base, and is something the company has done a fair bit over the last year.

However, the game’s product page on Nintendo’s site has thrown a wrench into this assumption. It specifically refers to the game as a New 3DS exclusive. What this means, then, is that only people who own a New Nintendo 3DS, New Nintendo 3DS XL, or New Nintendo 2DS XL, will be able to play the game. At that point, given that New 3DS forms a far smaller fraction of the larger 3DS install base, you do have to wonder why Nintendo didn’t bother putting the game on Switch as well.

Right now, this is just according to the page listing on Nintendo’s site, and that could be wrong. If there is any official confirmation, we will update you either way. Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn launches in 2019.

Microsoft has confirmed that the old gen versions of Minecraft– which is to say, versions of the game for PS3, Xbox 360, PS Vita, and Wii U- will be reaching end of support with the next update, the Aquatic update, citing low player base for those versions.

“Although we’d love to keep bringing new content to all our players forever, the older generation of consoles now make up less than five per cent of our active players,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a new blog post. “We’ve made the difficult decision to focus our efforts to support players where they play Minecraft the most and where we plan to add new features: on Java, PlayStation 4 Edition and the versions of Minecraft made with the Bedrock Engine on other consoles, mobile, and Windows 10.”

Curiously enough, the Nintendo 3DS version of the game- which is exclusive to New 3DS consoles, and released last year- has not been mentioned as one of the versions that is going to be sunset. It’s interesting, because New 3DS is technologically the most inferior platform the game is on, and that version can’t constitute a big portion of Minecraft‘s player base either. It probably has to do with how recently that version released, more than anything.

If you want to play Minecraft, you can play it on, well, literally anything- apart from the old gen versions reaching end of life, you have it on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, New Nintendo 3DS, iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac.

In all the news surrounding Nintendo hardware and software sales data today was the snippet of information released by Koei Tecmo this morning in their own earnings release- Fire Emblem Warriors, the hack and slash action game based on the Dynasty Warriors template that they made for Nintendo and Intelligent Systems’ Fire Emblem franchise, has managed to hit 1 million units worldwide in sales.

This is a remarkable result, because “musou” games (which is what the Dynasty Warriors style hack and slash games are called) generally don’t hit numbers that high. Ironically, one of the only other games of this style to hit that number in recent memory was also one based on a Nintendo property- Hyrule Warriors, which came out on the Wii U (and then the 3DS, with a Switch launch soon).

Fire Emblem Warriors is available now on the Nintendo Switch, as well as the New Nintendo 3DS.