Microsoft Acquiring 'Minecraft' Developer Mojang for $2.5 Billion

[pubwvj]

Bad news...

Microsoft has a history of buying things, especially games, and destroying them, especially the Mac versions. Sad. Glad for the developer. I hope they got filthy, dirty, stinking rich off of this before Microsoft drives the product into the ground and buries it.

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Imagine being able to build a house however you want it, then build all sorts of contraptions, then build a realistic nuclear reactor to power everything. And then upgrade all three of those as you progress technologically.

Got it. Except when I do these things in reality I actually get to
live in my house;
swim in my pond;
pick food from my gardens;
raise livestock on my real farm;
process meat in my butcher shop;
make bacon in my smokehouse;
...

Reality is so much more appealing and detail oriented.

(Actually, I've seen minecraft. It is cool. Great toy. I still like the real world version though...)

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So something like 92% of the companies in the world are running windows and that makes them irrelevant?

I love it when people run out numbers like that not realizing that the vast majority of those Windows computers are doing hum-drum tasks. A huge number of them are not even being used by 'humans' or as computers. They're just cash registers, control devices, etc. Windows is massive overkill for these systems but there it sits, chewing CRU, wasting processing cycles.

 

[Traverse]

Put your resources into Office for Mac! Not Minecraft!

 

[Toltepeceno]

Time to wake up there, Tolepeceno. Market share does not a good product make. And the 92% is such an outdated, incorrect number, it's not even funny. To truly understand market share, you need to look at specific "markets". When you begin to do that, you can see that Microsoft has been losing share by landslides over the past 10 years, and Apple has been gaining.

We hate Microsoft because they make sub-par products. Just look at their Outlook software suites. Compare them to more standards-compliant email programs. When you take a hard look, you can see why MS has become hated... the reasons are many.

YOU hate microsoft, not everyone does so YOU need to wake up. Hating a company is stupid and non productive. Most people are above that.

Landslide? MIcrosoft has 92% so can it. Losing market share? Sure, I can buy that but they lead in market share by more than landslides.

What does "making a good product" have to do with anything? It's selling so the hate is not there, just for people with a hate obsession.

This is from 2013, 91.5% so back up your talk and post proof that it's not true.

Windows currently powers 91.5% of all PCs currently in use, according to Net Applications’ June data.

http://bgr.com/2013/07/22/microsoft-market-share-connected-devices/

Office also dominates the office suite market, so I don't see a lot of hate there either.

Grow up, get past the hate. It's just a company and one that nobody forces you to buy from.

I prefer os, but I am smart enough to realize I am in the minority. I wonder who gets the most hate, microsoft or apple? I think apple gets more hate really.

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I love it when people run out numbers like that not realizing that the vast majority of those Windows computers are doing hum-drum tasks. A huge number of them are not even being used by 'humans' or as computers. They're just cash registers, control devices, etc. Windows is massive overkill for these systems but there it sits, chewing CRU, wasting processing cycles.

Bla, bla, bla. What does that have to do with my statement? Nothing. It just makes you feel good. Even if 50% were doing that, which I seriously doubt they STILL own the pc market. Haters are definitely going to hate.

 

[scaredpoet]

I have to wonder how those 18,000 people Microsoft let go a couple months ago feel about this.

 

[Toltepeceno]

I have to wonder how those 18,000 people Microsoft let go a couple months ago feel about this.

Since most are from the nokia line I bet they expected it.

 

[bartonjd]

MicroCraft?

 

[Mystic386]

This would have never happened when Steve Ballmer was in charge.

 

[dazed]

Reminds me of when Zynga overpaid for omgpop and then shuttered it and took a big write off.

 

[APlotdevice]

Reminds me of when Zynga overpaid for omgpop and then shuttered it and took a big write off.

Microsoft had better not shut down Mojang, or there will be hell to pay...

 

[AlecZ]

YOU hate microsoft, not everyone does so YOU need to wake up. Hating a company is stupid and non productive. Most people are above that. […] Haters are definitely going to hate.

Say that again after/if they kill Minecraft, or go back in time and say that after they killed Rare and Halo for Mac and kept AoE II HD Windows-only. There is a real, legitimate concern among users that Minecraft may be killed, messed up, or kept away from certain platforms. Microsoft has a bad history and given people valid reasons to hate it, and people don't forgive companies like they forgive friends.

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Why?

Microsoft seems to be very into Apple these days. Did we forget about MS Office on the iPad?

Apple users like to spend money... and Microsoft likes to make money. They would be foolish to cut off Apple support.

Nobody uses a Surface, and people use iPads instead. It still took them a long time to give in and release it for iPad for fear of letting iWork take over. Windows has more dominance, especially in the "gamer" population, so they can assert more control. Minecraft has no real competition, unlike Office, which has to compete with the free iWork. Microsoft tends to keep games away from Mac, and for a good reason. Same reason Google keeps their products largely separated from Mac and Windows and in the browser on https://*.google.com instead. And as someone who plays Age of Empires II HD as one of the few games I enjoy from time to time, I can say that MS has thoroughly neglected it and has left it full of bugs.

 

[batistuta]

The company behind Minecraft (Mojang) made 100M$ in profits last year, so we are talking a price/earning ratio of roughly 25 - compare that to 16-18 for MS and Apple, 29 for Google and 81 for Facebook. It's actually a company making money...
The point of Minecraft was never about smooth textures, though I dont pretend to know the full story - maybe I should watch the movie

Minecraft can also be used to visualise data

What MS want with it I dont know, but they need to stay profitable somehow and I guess this can be used for both PC and Xbox in a lot of ways if they think creatively...

 

[phillipduran]

I still have no idea what the appeal of this game is. Or really what it is all about.
Is it all world building? Does it run like a MMORPG?
And how is it this valuable for Microsoft? Is it possible to turn it in to what Sony's failed PS3 'home' service was?

It is a sandbox game. Virtual Legos would be a good comparison. There is a bit of zombies and skeletons mixed in to keep it unpredictable. You can adventure out into the world and gather resources to build with. It has good elements of discovery, risk, reward.

You can play with others on servers in persistent worlds. I dont know if it is massively multiplayer, but it is multiplayer.

The game also has the golden component that many casual games lack. The roller coaster of ups and downs. Of frustration and accomplishment. You can gather a bunch of rare items from adventuring and mining and then have it all blown up on your way back to your home or castle. This helps to give value to things you build or achieve.

Minecraft is massive on YouTube and other 3 party sites. I imagine Microsoft's purchase of Minecraft is to squeeze some money out of that community.

Sadly, it feels tainted now that Microsoft owns it. We'll see what happens.

 

[phillipduran]

Why do you assume they hate microsoft? Windows has a vast majority of the market share, so most of the haters are probably right here on macrumors.

I like apple, but I don't hate microsoft. Hating a major company achieves nothing.

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So something like 92% of the [companies](I meant to say computers here) in the world are running windows and that makes them irrelevant? Now THATS funny.

I just noticed both of these were from the same person. It's not healthy to harbor so much hate toward a fricken company, especial one that pretty much controls computer operating systems. It will get you nowhere, they are not going under any time soon.

The thing is, Microsoft deserves it.

 

[iFitzgerald]

Time to download the current version and back it up. If what Microsoft did with Rare ends up happening with Mojang, I'd rather have the current version to replay a couple of years down the road, than a destroyed version by Microsoft...

 

[mrxak]

Mojang is not worth $2.5 billion. If I owned Microsoft stock, I'd be selling right now. I don't blame Notch and co. for selling, though, at that price. Notch has said for years he doesn't like being "the Minecraft guy" and this is certainly a perfect excuse to get out.

But $2.5 billion is just bizarre. Has Mojang made hundreds of millions of dollars? Yes. Will they continue to? I'm already hearing about how Minecraft's popularity is waning. There was also a big shake-up with the modding community lately, which is turning a lot of people away from the game and shutting down a lot of major Minecraft servers. I know I'm a lot more interested these days in games like Stonehearth than I am in Minecraft. Minecraft's direction has been haphazard for a while, and the company really lost focus these last few years. I know basically nobody who plays Minecraft without extensive mods, but after the Bukkit debacle, I wonder if modders are going to jump ship to something else, like Minetest or another clone. With the founders of Mojang leaving the company, and after Microsoft's inevitable meddling, how much of Mojang will be left after a few months?

Especially on this forum, I think the comparisons to Bungie are going to come fast and furious. Bungie went from being an exciting game coming out on the Mac, to a launch title for Microsoft to sell their new Xbox. No doubt, Microsoft made money on the Bungie purchase. Of course, Halo post-Bungie was just awful. Will they make money on Mojang? I find it harder to believe they will. They'll have to destroy Minecraft to use it as a way of selling Xbones or Windows 8. There are already enough games like it on many different platforms, nobody needs to buy Minecraft 2. There's a reason why Blizzard keeps talking about making a new MMO, but nothing ever materializes, because they know they can't possibly replicate the success of WoW. Minecraft, like WoW, locked people in because everyone else is playing it too. Getting people to move to a new game set up for making Microsoft lots of money is not going to work, all it will do is give everyone a chance to compare the new game with all the other new games out there. Minecraft had first-mover advantage, and got all the player base, but try to replace Minecraft with a paid DLC, diamond-store'd, subscription model Minecraft 2 will just scatter that player base to a dozen different games.

So what is there left for Microsoft to do? Merchandising? A movie? A novelization? Minecraft is a sandbox game. There's no plot or characters to monetize. Players create their own stories. Microsoft will no doubt sell a few t-shirts and creeper plushies, but $2.5 billion worth? I don't think Realms is that popular, since it's all vanilla and the whole popularity of Minecraft is on the mods people make (and see above about the Bukkit debacle disrupting the modding community). The money Mojang has been making is on the sale of the game, but surely by now everyone who ever wanted to play has already purchased all the licenses they'll ever need. Microsoft will have an uprising on their hands if they break Mojang's word about all future versions being free to purchasers.

 

[Nightarchaon]

$2.5 Billion for minecraft ?!? what are they trying to do ? Buy back some sort of gaming industry relevance after they took, and continue to take a beating by sony and the PS4 ?

Or are they trying to do what EA have built themselves into an industry powerhouse doing, buy a known brand (Bioware/Maxis/whoever), one by one fire the talent in that team responsible for creating the games that made the brand so valuable, and then sell generic junk churned out by interns on cookie cutter development builds year after year until you have devalued the franchise to the point of no return ?

 

[malexandria]

Wow

The larger issue is this continues a trend of MS WAY overpaying for acquisitions.

aQuantive, Danger, Skype, Nokia and now Mojang.

Not to mention the $15 billion down the hole for XBox since 2000.

No wonder MS is being written off as irrelevant.

What a dumb comment, yes they do over pay, $15 billion on XBox since 2000? That's less than a billion and change a year and has been fairly profitable for them. I think Skype is doing well for them, the others who knows. But considering they still have 90% of the computer market and they still NET $20 or $30 billion dollars a year they are STILL relevant, despite what you idiot fanboys may think or wish.

 

[Toltepeceno]

The thing is, Microsoft deserves it.

I guess you are in the vast majority since they have close to 92% pc os market. Wallow in the hate, I seriously doubt they care.

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Say that again after/if they kill Minecraft, or go back in time and say that after they killed Rare and Halo for Mac and kept AoE II HD Windows-only. There is a real, legitimate concern among users that Minecraft may be killed, messed up, or kept away from certain platforms. Microsoft has a bad history and given people valid reasons to hate it, and people don't forgive companies like they forgive friends.

I could care less about any of those games and since they have close to 92% pc os share it's obvious that those that do are in the vast minority.

Microsoft tends to keep games away from Mac, and for a good reason.

Yes, that reason is that mac market share is not enough to put the effort into and of those that do own mac's they don't do so for games. If I had a company making games I wouldn't bother with mac either.

I like apple products, better than microsoft. I AM smart enough to know that when it comes to pc's we are in the minority, microsoft owns, and I know that as a company they are all the same. It's about the money. Jobs was no better than gates and apple is no better than microsoft. If anyone thinks either cares about them they need to put the kool aid down.

 

[Manderby]

Minecraft has been one of the best selling games every year since 2010 in almost any kind of store where the game was available. An unbroken userbase of several hundred thousands of real active users since years and an huge support-community with lots of additional content for free... Understandably that Microsoft wants to buy it. A good and fair deal in my opinion.

Apple would not buy Minecraft for the simple fact that it is written in Java. Apple hates Oracle and dismisses anything remotely connected. So far Microsoft was the only system producer being able to integrate dozends of languages and a wide variety of platforms under one system to make it accessible for few bucks. That's an achievement no one else can put their signature under.

I do love minecraft, I play it since more than 3 years with an unbroken interest.
In my opinion, Microsoft will continue to support minecraft for as long as they can. Eventually, something will change. But whether it is Microsoft or Mojang which change the game, there would be no difference, I believe.

 

[smoledman]

Minecraft has been one of the best selling games every year since 2010 in almost any kind of store where the game was available. An unbroken userbase of several hundred thousands of real active users since years and an huge support-community with lots of additional content for free... Understandably that Microsoft wants to buy it. A good and fair deal in my opinion.

Apple would not buy Minecraft for the simple fact that it is written in Java. Apple hates Oracle and dismisses anything remotely connected. So far Microsoft was the only system producer being able to integrate dozends of languages and a wide variety of platforms under one system to make it accessible for few bucks. That's an achievement no one else can put their signature under.

I do love minecraft, I play it since more than 3 years with an unbroken interest.
In my opinion, Microsoft will continue to support minecraft for as long as they can. Eventually, something will change. But whether it is Microsoft or Mojang which change the game, there would be no difference, I believe.

Pretty sure MS will write Minecraft 2 in C#, .NET. Java is a joke.