‘Minecraft: Xbox One’ Only $5 If You’ve Ever Played Xbox 360 Version

It’s been known for a while that existing Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition and Minecraft: PlayStation 3 Edition owners will be able to upgrade to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of the game for only $5. There were questions around how that would be enforced though with so many playing the game using retail disks versus downloading it. It turns out you won’t actually have to own the game to upgrade.

While answering a question about how world transfers work from Total Xbox, Mojang’s Owen Hill and Daniel Kaplan revealed that you can purchase Minecraft: Xbox One Edition if you’ve ever played the game, even if you don’t currently own it.

“The upgrade process, when you’ve got the $5 upgrade: if you’ve got it on disc you can transfer that as long as you’ve played online, basically,” Hill explained.

“Yeah, well you need to have had your 360 connected to the web. You don’t even need to have a Gold account, we just need to see that this user has been playing Minecraft. The only way for the system to understand that is if this Xbox has been connected,” added Kaplan.

You are not alone if you are thinking, “Wow, this is ripe for exploiting.” Someone could have played the game over at friend’s house using their profile or simply borrowed a disk. However, Mojang thought it would be “harsh” to force existing owners to pay the full $20 to upgrade to the next version of the game and the only solution to check is to see if an Xbox LIVE account profile has ever played Minecraft.

“So long as you put a disk into the 360 you can upgrade and I think that people will probably be taking advantage of that fact,” Hill admitted. “[B]ut… the thing is, the Xbox One version – it’s got a better draw distance, bigger worlds – 36 times bigger worlds, as you know – it’s got cool stuff in it. But it’s not massively different from the previous one. We probably could have made people pay [the full price] again – people probably would have. But it just seemed a bit harsh.

Obviously, Hill and Kaplan were only speaking towards the Xbox platform given that they were talking with Total Xbox. However, the process will be the same for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.

Kaplan also shared the following message about the release of Minecraft: PlayStation 4 Edition and Minecraft: Xbox One Edition.

And for your people asking for Minecraft Xbone/PS4 – it will be out soon! <3 Sorry for keeping you waiting

— Daniel Kaplan (@Kappische) August 28, 2014

The PlayStation 4 version of Minecraft was just sent to certification with Sony earlier this week, as The Inquisitr reported. The Xbox One Edition should be sent to certification with Microsoft by the end of the week. That puts the release of the PlayStation 4 Edition possibly September 2 or September 9 and the Xbox One Edition not long afterward.

Will you be taking advantage of the $5 upgrade for Minecraft on the PS4 and Xbox One? Let us know in the comments below.

[Images via 4J Studios]