"Bedrock is basically an extension of Minecraft Pocket Edition "
This seems crazy. When MS bought Mojang, why didn't they start with the console port for Bedrock? Even if some other contractor, it would be a starting point better than the phone version?
because the legacy console ports where very tied to the platforms they ran on
This isn't really true, the code works like most cross platform codebases where most of the code is common and then there's a bunch of platform-specific backends that handle graphics, sound, input, etc. They used the same gameplay code for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation Vita, Xbox One, Playstation 4, Wii U, and Switch, so clearly there's not really much keeping it stuck to a single platform. A recent leak of the legacy console source code revealed that they also had an internal Windows port to make development easier, although you still need a controller to play.
Ah, okay. I didn't know that
As for the internal windows port, that's how most console development is done nowadays. Gamefreak (the pokemon people) does build of their games for PC which is neat considering how different the switch is compared to the differences between playstation/xbox and pc (those are just amd cpus and gpus on the inside, whereas the switch uses some nvidia soc)
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