I went to install Minecraft and I noticed the launcher it installs is 2 years old and the latest news post showing up in it for me is 4 years old. After I clicked play in the launcher I get a loading text with no indication anything is happening after leaving it alone for a while.
After some quick google search's with no results about it I uninstalled it and went to the Minecraft website which had a deb file to download. After I installed that nothing showed up so I restarted and it showed up working fine with the latest launcher. So does the Software Boutique generally have outdated software or is it only some stuff that's outdated?
According to the software boutique details for Minecraft, it uses https://launchpad.net/~flexiondotorg/+archive/ubuntu/minecraft as a PPA to download the game and it has not been updated for a while. Just check the sources in the details when installing something from the Software Boutique.
Brave Browser for instance will be downloaded from the developer's PPA, making sure you always get the new releases.
Some software like Darktable are downloaded from Ubuntu's Repository. It will not be the latest version but should be more secure than grabbing the latest version using the developers' PPA. It depends on your use case in the end. Security/stability vs the new shiny stuff.