Microsoft to acquire Minecraft for $2.5bn

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Pros: 3 new dimensions added with new materials in each!

Cons: $13.99 per month to enter them.

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Mojang, whose three founders of will leave the company, assured fans that “everything is going to be OK”.

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it’s been downloaded more than 100 million times since its 2009 launch.
It remains the most popular game on Xbox, iOS and Android

Is that right? Candy Crush Saga on Android alone has north of 100 million downloads. Minecraft may be the top paid game on the Play Store charts, but it still only shows downloads in the 5M-10M range.

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Hopefully this means Notch pulled his head out of his ass. Now they can get back to what is most important: porting Minecraft to the Oculus Rift.

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Thanks for the correction.

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Well, I guess I can stop waiting for a Wii U port now…

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Microsoft attempts to buy a “vibrant community” for $2.5bn. Linux is also suspiciously absent from their list of platforms where it’s available today.

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That was Notch before the sale. He had more money than he knew what to do with, according to him. Which makes this kind of inexplicable.
Also inexplicable: “Microsoft expects to close the sale by the end of 2014, and break even by the end of 2015.”
Huh?

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Each MicroCraft user will start paying subscription fees by January 2015 when the new version comes out. It will be multiplayer-focused and a connection to the Cloud is required to play so achievements can be consistent across all your machines, all your life.

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I laughed, but I’m sad.

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Does that mean there’s still time to get the DOJ to block the sale? Anticompetitive! Monopolistic! Pretty soon Clippy will have all the cobblestone!

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2.5bn $ holly cow!!

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Minecraft 1.8 - The Bountiful Update

  • Added Granite, Andesite, and Diorite stone blocks, with smooth versions
  • Added Slime Block
  • Added Iron Trapdoor
  • Added Prismarine and Sea Lantern blocks

etc. etc.

− Removed Herobrine

Dammit Microsoft! They’ve already ruined the game.

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He’s decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance. Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning Minecraft became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang.

Hmm, maybe he’s selling it to Microsoft because that’s the second best way to kill it and make way for something else in the industry.

The best way would have been to sell it to Yahoo, but they didn’t have the cash.

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If you read the whole press release, he says it’s not a money thing - but he doesn’t want to be Phil Fish.

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That’s all too plausible. Also: microtransactions.

Yeah, but surely there was a way of taking Minecraft off his hands (especially since he wasn’t actually directly involved with it anymore) without selling it to a third party for lots of money. I just don’t quite get it.

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For those of you worried about MS destroying MC, it usually takes them a while. They very rarely immediately make something they buy worse like Google does. Instead it takes year and years of well intentioned but clumsy crushing corporate weight to slowly squeeze all the life out till they’re reduced to a present day Rare or Lionhead.

If anything I bet they don’t do much to Minecraft and go for Minecraft Next where they make their real mark (and possible exclusivity).

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“They drove a creeper full of money up to my house! I’m only made of stone!”

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