With news that cross-platform play will soon come to Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition, many have wondered how Mojang would be able to unify all players.
For players on Nintendo Switch to join those on Xbox One and PC, head of Xbox Phil Spencer has explained that they will be required to log in with an Xbox Live Account.
“It’s an Xbox Live account. I mean, that’s our gaming social network,” Spencer explained, speaking on Giant Bomb at Nite – Live From E3 2017: Nite 2.
He continued: “We use Xbox Live as the way to make sure we know who our players are, controls around parental controls and other things that we put into our platform are there.
“And as you’re buying things in Minecraft, you want to make sure you have them available on the other platforms, so we have to know who you are. If you have a Realm that you’ve created on the PC and you want to get to it on the Switch, we have to have an identity system and we just use Xbox Live.”
“You’re still going to buy the game from Nintendo, you don’t buy it from us,” he added. “It’s really just a way for us to unify the Minecraft players in our social network inside of Xbox Live.”
