Steps to reproduce the issue:
Launch Minecraft (Bedrock Edition) on Xbox.
Load any single-player world.
Turn on a second Xbox controller and ensure it is connected.
Press Start on the second controller to join the game in split-screen.
Expected result:
The second player joins the world successfully in split-screen mode.
Actual result:
Nothing happens – the game does not respond or allow the second player to join.
Restarting the world occasionally helps, but in most cases, the entire Minecraft app must be closed and restarted.
Additional Notes:
This issue has occurred consistently over multiple Minecraft updates.
All controllers are official Xbox hardware and work fine outside of Minecraft.
The issue is random but fairly common, making local multiplayer unreliable.
It happens across multiple worlds, not just a specific save.
Temporary workarounds (like restarting the world or game) are inconsistent and not a proper fix.
Comments 3
I think we’re having exactly the same issue. It’s random, but happens fairly often. It’s random which controllers will not work, or a single controller controls 2 players at the same time, etc.
We’ve found the best way to avoid this is to quite the game entirely, make sure all controllers are on (we do 4-player split screen), then start Minecraft. Of course it ends up being random as to which of the 4 controllers will control the menu! But then go to the world, and have the controllers join the game one at a time.
Even that is unfortunately not guaranteed to work, but it’s been the most reliable (goes from 80% failure to 80% success).
Also affected. Adding details that may help narrow this down.
Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, native Switch 2 version, 26.60. The same issue also occurred on the Switch 1 version (running on Switch 2) before the native release.
Steps to reproduce:
Create a new world with default settings
Load the world as player 1
Join as player 2 with a second controller (+ button)
Result: Split-screen appears for about a second, then the game exits the world and returns to the world selection screen. No error message, and the app doesn't close.
Key detail: this only happens in newly created worlds.
100% reproducible on every new world, including one created immediately before testing.
Worlds created on the original Switch earlier in 2026 still work in split-screen on the same console, same game version, same controllers.
Timeline: Started in August–September 2026 on the Switch 1 version, after the 26.40/26.50 updates. Still present in 26.60 on the native Switch 2 version.
Possible cause: 26.40 and 26.50 introduced behavior gated on a world's base game version (e.g., stair corner and thin-fence/trip-wire connection-state neighbor updates that apply only to worlds created on 1.26.40/1.26.50+). That matches the old-world/new-world split exactly. This is a guess, but checking whether split-screen client sync fails on worlds with base game version 1.26.40+ may be a quick way to confirm.
Troubleshooting already tried, none of which fixed it:
Reinstalled the game directly onto the console's internal storage
Fully uninstalled and reinstalled the game
Cleared all game cache
Removed all other games from the console
Restarted the console
Lowered or turned off all graphics settings
Workaround: Playing older worlds (created before 26.40) in split-screen works.
It is really unbelievable to me that the most successful game in the world after years and years has not fixed this very basic issue. It happens regularly that me and my children are frustrated because one of the players cannot play - because one of the controllers controls several game characters and other controllers dont do anything. I have tried all the different ways of connecting with the different player profiles to prevent this, there is no reliable way to prevent it from happening. Minecraft is literally the only xbox game that has this problem so regularly, I have played several dozen other xbox games and they all manage to recognize which controller belongs to which account (some like Stardew Valley sometimes have problems with this too but not nearly as much as Minecraft and many games are programmed in such a way that this problem literally never happens). How is this still not fixed?