With Microsoft’s move to support ARM processors, developing new and exciting hardware, emulation layers and bringing attention to the platform; it boggles my mind that they’ve decided to drop support for future versions of Minecraft on the ARM architecture. Although the post where they talk specifically about Minecraft mobile doesn’t specifically state ARM, users of ARM powered Windows Laptops have started seeing the following messages telling them that their device will no longer be supported after this update. When you click on the “Learn More” button you’re taken to the blog post from 7/8/20 detailing “IMPORTANT NEWS REGARDING MINECRAFT MOBILE” .
The blog post states that “Effective in October 2020, Minecraft will no longer be updated or supported on Gear VR, Windows 10 Mobile, Android devices with less than 768MB of RAM, iOS devices running iOS 10 or below, or video cards that only support DirectX 10.1 or below.” Unfortunately the ARM compiled code that Windows on ARM installs onto the computer is actually the Windows 10 Mobile version. Which means that devices running Windows on ARM will be unable to participate on the latest multiplayer servers or shards. This is a big oversight on a platform that is just beginning to gain traction. More applications are beginning to show up with ARM native code, even Visual Studio is rumored to be coming soon to a Windows on ARM device near you.
Now, to be perfectly honest you can tell I don’t play Minecraft much on my Lenovo Yoga c630 WOS, otherwise I’d have been reporting on this a lot sooner. Minecraft is one of the few games to run natively on this laptop that’s a full (real) game, but even with that my daily use case simply isn’t gaming on a laptop. Minecraft has previously ran great on this hardware, beating out my kiddo’s 4th gen i7 laptop for graphics and frame rate (don’t worry he’s gotten an upgrade, online school became a priority, which meant getting him some newer hardware). It’s still crazy that there’s been no announcement about how Microsoft will keep Minecraft updated on Windows on ARM devices. After searching there was a handful of Jira bug reports questioning the message on the Mojang site shortly after the blog post on 7/8/20, though the bugs are still open. Now in the past few days Surface Pro X users have reported that Minecraft crashes while loading into the Main Menu. Looks like it’s an issue specific to the ARM release. I’ve confirmed this on my Qualcomm 850 powered Yoga C630.
I’d really like to see Microsoft continue to support the ARM platform. Minecraft is a big deal, and continued support to the ARM platform is essential. Hopefully it’s an oversight on the marketing/communication side of things (wouldn’t be the first time) and there will continue to be support for Minecraft on Windows for ARM. With the current crashing issues though, I’m a little more concerned that maybe they are dropping support, even if it’s just “for now”. All I can say is that I’m going to be watching this very closely, as it may hint to the future of Windows on ARM. Cheers!
