More information promised on May 17

Microsoft has something new planned for Minecraft, and it looks like an augmented reality app for mobile phones.

In a teaser video posted to the Microsoft Twitter and YouTube accounts, a woman accidentally swaps phones with a man sitting on a bench. She picks up the phone to discover a new Minecraft game, in which one of the game’s polygonal pigs is wallowing in the mud, overlaid on a real-world surface. The teaser gets a bit fantastical when a pair of Minecraft villagers appear nearby, hinting that the game world will inhabit our own reality.

Microsoft promises more information about its mysterious Minecraft project on May 17.

Today’s teaser coincides with the Microsoft Build conference for developers, which runs May 6-8.

Microsoft has shown demos of Minecraft working with augmented and mixed reality before — the game is also supported on VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and Gear VR — but this teaser implies something a little different. It’s possible that Microsoft may take a page from Niantic, the developer of Ingress, Pokémon Go, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, to bring Minecraft gameplay to mobile AR gaming.

Source: Polygon