Minecraft’s Better Together update has been delayed on the Switch again

Announced earlier this year at E3, Minecraft’s Better Together update is designed to bring cross-platform multiplayer — as well as a new, more efficient game engine called Bedrock — to a variety of players across the Xbox One, PC, Mobile and, to everyone’s surprise, the Switch. Initially, the update was slated to launch on all platforms at the same time, but things don’t always go as planned.

Mojang, the longtime developers of Minecraft, announced during Minecraft’s annual fan event Minecon Earth that the Switch version of Better Together has been delayed until 2018, citing the need to make the update “the best experience possible.”

Separately, the Nintendo Switch community will still be getting the new version of Minecraft with cross-platform multiplayer, but not until 2018. Nintendo has been a great partner and we’re really excited to fully bring Switch players into the fold, however, we need to make sure we deliver the best experience possible. So the new version of Minecraft will now be coming to Nintendo Switch next year.

This isn’t the first time Better Together has been delayed on the Switch. It was initially planned to launch on all platforms in the US Summer, but missed that window and was delayed until the US Autumn. When the update finally did launch on other platforms in September, the Switch version was announced to be coming in the US Winter, before a stealth update to the FAQ gave us the release date of “when it’s ready.”

Given the complexities of the project, with Xbox Live integration and a whole new engine for the game to run on, it’s no surprises that the Minecraft team is having a few difficulties. That said, there’s no doubt that many Minecraft fans would rather see the update be good than be here quickly. As Shigeru Miyamoto famously said, “a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”