Skip to main content

Now you can play Minecraft from the comfort of your Samsung Gear VR

If you’ve ever thought Minecraft wasn’t “intense” or “immersive” enough, Oculus revealed today that the blocky sandbox-survival game is now available on Samsung Gear VR.

The port apparently contains everything from Minecraft: Pocket Edition, offering both Creative and Survival modes all in one $7 package. All the skins and multiplayer functionality you would expect from the standard mobile rendition of the game are also intact, though, unlike that version, a compatible gaming controller is required.

Recommended Videos

“Minecraft is a game that you can both figuratively and literally lose yourself in. In fact, my strongest memories of being inside VR are from the time I’ve spent exploring Minecraft on Gear VR,” writes Oculus CTO and famed games industry vet John Carmack. “Experiencing it in virtual reality changes it from an abstract activity to a visceral one — it goes from a sense of playing the game to one of being inside your world, and spinning around to find a creeper sneaking up on you leaves a powerful impression. Infinite worlds have been explored, shaped, and shared by millions of people, and now in VR; that sounds a bit like the fabled Metaverse.”

What’s more, players will have the opportunity to toggle between two different modes in what’s being dubbed Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. There’s the default theater mode, and perhaps the more exciting first-person view we’ve come to expect from virtual reality games.

Speaking with Digital Trends, Oculus says that while some users will find the first-person mode more intriguing, others will lean more toward theater mode, conceivably to reduce nausea.

“It has to do with comfort,” a company rep told us. “Minecraft is comfortable for some. You can choose between the more comfortable default theater view or the more intense and immersive first-person view that lets you stand beside your creations. With Gear VR, if you choose the first-person view, you can examine what you’ve built naturally like you would in the real world.”

The company has plans to bring Minecraft to Oculus Rift later this year.

Gabe Carey
A freelancer for Digital Trends, Gabe Carey has been covering the intersection of video games and technology since he was 16…
The best Zelda dungeons, ranked
Link and Zelda under Hyrule Castle in "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom."

There are a lot of metrics I could use to rank the best Zelda games. I could talk about the best Zelda bosses, the worlds, items, and more, but I believe the dungeons are the biggest individual factor in deciding how each game stacks up to the others. These are the meat of every Zelda game. All the combat and puzzle solving happens here, and the excitement of exploring each one is what pushes us to want to explore these worlds. The boss is the icing on the cake, but a good dungeon can be the highlight of the entire game. Looking back at all Zelda games, I have made some tough calls to bring you a list of the best Zelda dungeons, ranked.

#10 Eagle's Tower - Link's Awakening

Read more
We need to start having real conversations about AI in gaming
Copilot Quake II game.

AI has become a dirty word across almost every discipline over the past few years. As big corporations keep pushing this technology forward, a vocal resistance among creatives, critics, and passionate communities has risen up in opposition. While every creative medium is at risk of AI influence now, gamers are particularly sensitive about this technology sucking the creativity and human element from our beloved medium. Even the mere mention of AI being used in game development triggers a massive backlash, but we need to start being more nuanced in how we talk about the ways AI should and should not be used. Because, like it or not, AI is going to become more ubiquitous in gaming. We can't keep talking about AI as though it is a black-and-white thing. It is a tool, and like any tool, there are ways it can be used appropriately.

The question we need to ask ourselves now is, when is it ethical to use and what crosses the line?

Read more
Mecha Break is the closest I’ve felt to piloting a real Gundam outside Japan
Key art for Mecha Break.

In 2015, in a mostly-empty arcade in Fukuoka, I slid into the pilot seat of a Gundam.

I pulled the door down, watching as it seamlessly merged with the rest of the wall and turned into a display of my surroundings. As I pulled the earpiece down, the radio crackled to life as other pilots greeted me through comms.

Read more