Minecraft for Oculus Quest and Oculus Go is now marked as ‘Under Review’ on Microsoft’s feedback tracker.
The request for an Oculus Quest port was posted in May of this year. It is now the 3rd most upvoted suggestion of all time on the Minecraft feedback hub. A similar request for Oculus Go was made back in July 2018, and is also highly upvoted.
On Monday, Microsoft added the ‘under review’ tag to both suggestions, attaching the following statement:
While we have decided against a Java client for these platforms, we are still monitoring interest in a Bedrock version for these platforms.
Minecraft is the highest selling 3D game ever, with over 150 million copies sold. It is available on almost all gaming platforms, with cross platform multiplayer between most of them.
Minecraft VR
Minecraft is already available in VR on the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR. It released for both platforms three years ago in 2016.
Gear VR runs the same Oculus mobile store as Go, so in theory porting should be easy. In fact, some YouTubers have even managed to sideload the game into the Go headset, though reportedly only singleplayer works. Oculus CTO John Carmack was heavily involved in porting the game to Gear VR, and has publicly expressed his interest in a standalone VR port.
I can't give a date, but I think progress is being made. I care a lot about getting it!
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) July 6, 2018
In September 2018 Carmack commented “when we get Minecraft running on Go,” a tweet which hinted at his ongoing commitment to making the port happen.
I spend the most time in Netflix. My favorite demo is Henry. My favorite re-playable games are Thumper, Daedalus, and Smash Hit. When we get Minecraft running on Go it will be back in the list.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) September 27, 2018
What’s The Delay?
The Minecraft team reportedly spent much of 2017 and 2018 porting the game to the Nintendo Switch. It was originally meant to ship in 2017, but didn’t arrive until mid 2018. Additionally, the team made fundamental changes to the graphics engine in preparation for the ‘Super Duper graphics pack’, which was downloadable content meant to add modern graphical features to the game. This too was intended to be released in 2017, but was recently canceled due to technical challenges.
The delays of these projects could mean that a lower priority task such as porting to standalone VR headsets couldn’t get the development resources needed to make it happen.
We’ll keep you updated on any further news about Minecraft coming to standalone VR headsets.
