Minecraft's annual promotional broadcast took place this evening. As part of the demonstration, Mojang showed off some of the updates coming to the game. First up: the Bundles Of Bravery update, which will add a proper hardcore mode to the Bedrock Edition, as well as bundles that let you carry more items in your inventory when adventuring.
Hardcore mode adds permadeath to Minecraft, giving you one life to live and automatically creating a new world when you inevitably succumb to a creep. This challenging option has long been available in the Java Edition of Minecraft, but in Bedrock every time you died you had to either manually delete it and create a new world or circumvent it with an unsatisfactory paid mod on Bedrock's marketplace.
Bundles Of Bravery adds a simple toggle that you can add as you create your world that appears to exist regardless of other difficulty settings. My kid who watches Minecraft hardcore mod videos on YouTube all day long will be very excited.
Packs are pretty simple: a craftable bag that you can place items into, which then only takes up one inventory slot. Mojang says older Minecraft has fewer block types, so a mining trip will fill up less of your inventory because your dirt and cobblestones will pile up in your inventory. Packs allow you to recreate something similar by taking all your Andesite, Diorite and Calcite and stuffing them into a bag.
These bags have been available in preview builds of Java and Bedrock since August, but were tested before and scrapped in 2020. Looks like they'll succeed this time.
There's no release date yet for Bundles Of Bravery, but Mojang recently announced its intention to release fewer, smaller Minecraft updates going forward. This should happen soon.