Minecraft Pocket Edition celebrates its 5th birthday with new info on 1.0 update

About five years ago, developer Mojang released the first version of Minecraft Pocket Edition for Android. At the time, the mobile version of the popular PC sandbox game was an exclusive for Sony’s Xperia Play smartphone (remember that?). Now the developer is celebrating the 5th anniversary of that launch with more info, and a new trailer, for the game’s upcoming 1.0 update.

Mojang, which was bought by Microsoft after the launch of Minecraft Pocket Edition, says that the mobile version currently has over 40 million players. It remains on the top of the Google Play Store charts as the most downloaded paid game. Since the launch, the developer has been busy adding new features that will allow the mobile version of the game to have the same features as the PC version of Minecraft when it officially came out of beta several years ago.

Minecraft Pocket Edition will officially reach that milestone sometime later in December with the upcoming 1.0 update. Mojang revealed some of its features today, which include something called the World Seed Library. This is supposed to help players find world with the specific types of features they want from the game. Also coming in the update are polar bears for any snowy or artic-based worlds. Finally, the game’s original soundtrack will finally be added to the Pocket Edition for the first time. Mojang says that they also have plans beyond the 1.0 update for the game, but obviously they want to keep those a secret for now.

Do you play Minecraft Pocket Edition? If so, are you excited about the upcoming 1.0 update?