Minecraft

Minecraft Review: $6.99 Buys the Whole Game, Not the Whole Bill

What $6.99 buys, and what it does not gate

The purchase is one payment and the whole game. There is no energy meter, no lives, no timed gate and nothing that stops progress until you pay again — unusual enough at this price to be the main argument for it. The first ten minutes are punching trees, making a wooden pickaxe and surviving the first night indoors. By the tenth hour it is redstone circuits, farms that run themselves and a base you light so mobs cannot spawn inside it. Worlds are generated rather than authored, so there is no content list to finish. Survival and Creative both come with the purchase; Creative removes the survival layer and hands you every block.

Realms: $7.99 a month for a world that runs without you

Realms Plus is Mojang's own hosting, and its job is persistence. Up to ten friends can be in your world at once, and they can open the active world from any device at any time — the owner does not have to be logged in, which is the part a phone cannot do on its own. A subscription holds three world slots, so separate saves coexist without deleting anything, and it bundles Marketplace Pass, which costs $3.99 a month by itself. New subscribers get the first month free. Worth being clear: Realms is not required to play with other people — joining someone else's Realm or a public server costs nothing.

Minecoins, Marketplace and the child account default

The in-game store runs on Minecoins, a currency you buy first and spend second, which makes the real price of a skin pack harder to feel. Marketplace Pass at $3.99 a month is the alternative: a rotating catalogue of creator-made worlds, skins and texture packs instead of separate purchases. All figures here are US prices and change by region and over time. One default is worth knowing before you hand the phone over: on a child Microsoft account, multiplayer and chat are switched off until a parent signs in and enables them. That is Microsoft's setting rather than a fault, and it catches families who expected the kids to play together the same evening.