Microsoft and developer Mojang have announced a significant update to Minecraft that will let people play and create together regardless of whether they're using mobile phones, game consoles or PCs.

Dubbed the "Better Together" update, the changes to the immensely popular game were announced at Microsoft's media briefing ahead of this week's E3 expo in Los Angeles. Once the update rolls out in the coming months, the newest versions of the game — including the Pocket Edition, Xbox One Edition, Nintendo Switch edition and more — will be renamed simply to Minecraft and will become functionally identical.

With other changes including the expansion of the in-game marketplace — where players can sell their created wares — and easier access to community-run servers, Better Together will mean Minecraft runs a bit more like a service or social media platform than a traditional game. This means that not only can multiplayer sessions with up to eight players consist of people on any combination of devices, but it also means that no matter where a user logs on they will have access to all of their purchased add-on content and preferences.

While older versions of the game, first released in 2009, are still popular on Windows and Mac, Minecraft has really exploded since expanding to everything from portable gaming devices to Kindle tablets. In the years since Microsoft purchased Mojang and Minecraft for $US2.5 billion the playerbase has only grown, with more than 55 million monthly global users as of February this year.

But many versions of the game are essentially their own separate islands, meaning players have to either pick a primary device to play the game on, or juggle multiple versions and purchase content multiple times.

Behind the scenes, the developers have been unifying these disparate versions to run on code it calls the "Bedrock Engine". Now that versions of the game on consoles like Xbox One and Nintendo Switch are set to move to Bedrock, the Better Together update could make it significantly easier for more users to play more often.

Legacy versions of the game that will not move to Bedrock will still be playable but will remain their own separate islands and will be distinguishable by the fact they are not simply called Minecraft (for example Minecraft Wii U Edition and Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition are not making the jump). To this end Microsoft is renaming the older version of the game on Mac and Windows to Minecraft Java Edition. Windows players that want to take advantage of Better Together will need to play the Windows 10 version. Mac users are, at least so far, out of luck.

Microsoft and Mojang hope the new update will help achieve their vision of making the game a true creative platform. While Minecraft has already long been a place where players make art, produce viral videos of crazy Rube Goldberg machines and run independent businesses maintaining servers or making custom add-ons, these activities have largely relied on infrastructure, sites and services outside the developers' control.

With Better Together, the marketplace where users sell their wares will be embedded into the game itself, so players will no longer need to purchase and install them manually or from sketchy websites.

Servers are also being pulled natively into the game as of the Better Together update. Logging in to privately-run servers is very popular, because enterprising players and groups can run servers that turn the game into anything from arena combat simulators to mystery games.

These servers can host thousands of players at a time for massive multiplayer games in real time. The downside is that getting to a server requires, at the very least, obtaining its IP addresses from somewhere on the internet and entering them manually. Better Together marks the start of Minecraft's partnership with certain vetted server providers — including popular ones like Lifeboat, InPvP, Mineplex and CubeCraft — so that players will be able to log in from any device through a simple menu interface within the game itself.

The author travelled to Los Angeles as a guest of Ubisoft.