Minecraft Earth beta hits Android next week

Microsoft is to launch the Minecraft Earth closed beta for Android next week.

The beta was made available to iOS users in July. To participate, users need a mobile device that runs at least Android 7 or iOS 10. You can register for the beta here.

Developer Mojang released the video above to show players what they can expect from the beta.

“In a nutshell,” it explains, “you use the near-magic of augmented reality to overlay a beautifully blocky Minecraft world on top of the real one, where you can then build incredible structures together with others, collect these nifty things called tappables and level up to gain new and improved build plates.”

Microsoft demonstrated the first Minecraft Earth live gameplay during Apple’s WWDC keynote in June.

Minecraft Earth was announced in May, when the seminal building game celebrated its tenth anniversary. Microsoft said at the time that Minecraft sales had topped 176 million.

Rather than developing a full-blown sequel, Microsoft has said its primary concern is keeping the existing Minecraft community happy with updates and new versions of the game, such as the episodic Minecraft: Story Mode and dungeon crawler Minecraft Dungeons, which is set for release in spring 2020.