Minecraft Earth beta launches this month

Microsoft is to launch the Minecraft Earth closed beta this month.

You can still register for the beta, which is set to launch for iOS in “a few select” cities over the next two weeks, with the Android version following shortly after.

In a blog post, developer Mojang said participants will need to play the AR game at least once each week or they’ll lose their spot to someone else, “as space in the beta is very limited”.

It has also released the video above to show what players can expect from the beta.

“In a nutshell,” Mojang 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.