Minecraft Pocket Edition has always been the red-headed stepchild of the game’s many versions, and for obvious reasons: The tech and controls behind the mobile versions necessarily make it more limited. Well, that’s slowly starting to change. Mojang has officially announced that Minecraft Pocket Edition and Windows 10 Edition version 1.0 is coming soon—and bringing with it the Ender Dragon, the End and the Elytra. Minecraft mobile has finally come of age.
Minecraft Pocket Edition 1.0: The Ender Dragon And The End
Minecraft Pocket Edition never had the full featureset of Minecraft PC Edition or even the Console Editions, which lag behind the PC version by a year or so. For years, Minecraft Pocket Edition didn’t even have the Nether. It does now, and with the next major release, it will also get the game’s other major dimension in the form of the End.
More importantly, update 1.0 brings the Ender Dragon to Minecraft Pocket Edition, which gives the game’s Survival mode its ostensible endpoint, its ultimate goal—not that the game actually ends at that point, of course. But it adds a certain level of finality and completion to Pocket Edition. Hence the big upgrade to the “1.0” version number. It’s finally a full, complete release, although Mojang assures us that it will also continue to be updated.
There’s one big question, though: What version of the End is Minecraft Pocket Edition getting? Mojang’s press release says nothing about end cities, which debuted in February on PC, but haven’t arrived yet on Console Edition. However, the company promises that Pocket players will get the Elytra, the magic wings found deep in end cities on the PC version.
That bodes well for a full-featured version of the End coming to Pocket Edition. It’s entirely conceivable that Minecraft Pocket 1.0 will come with the older version of the End, with just the Ender Dragon and its battlefield, and will offer the Elytra as a late-game reward for defeating it. But it seems to make more sense for the company to develop the version of the End as it exists now, with all its new late-game features, rather than having to do another update later. The presence of the Elytra means that, for one of the first times, Pocket Edition has something the Console Edition doesn’t have. We’ll see how long that lasts, but it’s an exciting moment for mobile players no matter what. The End is near!