Minecraft Earth finally puts you into the game via augmented reality

Minecraft has been played and loved by many, many millions of people over the last decade, but the upcoming Minecraft Earth – first demonstrated at Apple’s WWDC keynote – puts a new kind of spin on the modern classic. Rather than build blocky worlds on your 2D screen of choice, the mobile game uses augmented reality to let you drop those blocks all around you as you please. And then once you’ve built a structure or contraption to your liking, you can blow it up into a “life-size” version and explore via your phone screen… and nearby friends can see you walk through the world on their own devices. Apple showed off the impressive tech at the keynote, using ARKit 3 to cut out nearly all of the fuzz around the player and have her fairly-cleanly inserted atop the familiar chunky blocks. Can Minecraft Earth really make Minecraft an even huger phenomenon?