Microsoft May Buy Minecraft Studio For $2B

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Did they just says $2 billion for Mojang!?!? Holy hell, we need a price check on isle #3 please. :eek:

Microsoft is in serious discussions to buy Mojang, the independent Swedish studio responsible for Minecraft, in a deal estimated at more than $2 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. An agreement could be signed this week, the site says.
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So if that's any indication of the company's PE ratio, it explains why Notch isn't feeling like doing much else. He's likely made way more money than he has publicly let on.

It might also explain Minecraft's slow development. They're likely terrified of changing anything too much, since it's still making money just the way it is.

Why dilute a cash cow with a sequel or trying to clean up the code or get off of JAVA when it's made you company worth a possible 2B deal with MS?

It all makes more sense now.
 
This is totally unlike Microsoft, being a few years late to the party.
 
travbrad said:
This is totally unlike Microsoft, being a few years late to the party.
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In forward facing consumer tech, Microsoft is always late to the party. On the back end, Microsoft is much more innovative. Started getting into Azure more after some Windows 8 developer training I took last week. There is some super slick stuff there, probably why Microsoft's cloud business is going so well and why Nadella become CEO as he came from that business.

This is a good buy for Microsoft. I think they need to pick up a few more gaming companies, especially in the mobile space.
 
Wait a minute. What this has to do with Satya Nadella "mobile first, cloud first" bullshit not to mention the thousands that got laid off
 
heatlesssun said:
In forward facing consumer tech, Microsoft is always late to the party. On the back end, Microsoft is much more innovative. Started getting into Azure more after some Windows 8 developer training I took last week. There is some super slick stuff there, probably why Microsoft's cloud business is going so well and why Nadella become CEO as he came from that business.

This is a good buy for Microsoft. I think they need to pick up a few more gaming companies, especially in the mobile space.
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I don't know if that's the right way to go per se, although Microsoft simply doesn't have the talents to mobile gaming in-house, and it would be easier to buy gaming companies I suppose. I don't have high hopes on Windows Phone being a strong gaming platform personally.
 
caddys83 said:
Wait a minute. What this has to do with Satya Nadella "mobile first, cloud first" bullshit not to mention the thousands that got laid off
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Minecraft is on mobile OSes isn't it? Four would strategies for a company like Microsoft will never make a great deal of sense simply because Microsoft has some many lines of business. As for the layoffs, it sucks, but Nokia's phone business just wasn't sustainable and hasn't been for a long time, well before Elop got there. When it comes to layoffs for a company like Microsoft that's only lost money on paper in one quarter in it's 28 years as a publically traded company, they are totally about greed. But if you keep a bloated payroll and don't keep up the income, layoffs become about survival.
 
caddys83 said:
RIP Minecraft :(
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Gotta make a backup of it before the game goes to hell. I know a lot of people here probably don't understand Minecraft but it's a pioneering game. It should be revolutionizing the gaming industry but no game developers seem to be looking at it for example. Lots of clones but nothing trying to do Minecrafts example of destructible and constructable environments.
 
Good for Notch, glad he's made his fortune by accident.

Would be nice if we could all be as well off.
 
Reimu said:
I don't know if that's the right way to go per se, although Microsoft simply doesn't have the talents to mobile gaming in-house, and it would be easier to buy gaming companies I suppose. I don't have high hopes on Windows Phone being a strong gaming platform personally.
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The problem for Windows Phone right now is market share, market share, market share. Microsoft was just too late in the game of modern smart phones, but they have taken just about every step they can to catch up. Windows Phone 8.1 is pretty much on feature parity with iOS and Android, the licensing is now free and Microsoft has made it much easier for OEMs to reuse Android devices and repurpose them with Windows Phone. And with the arrival of Windows 9, Windows Phone and RT will be exactly the same OS so it will be easier to target Windows phones, tablets and PC simultaneously.

But the market share gap is creating a big app gap from the top tier developers and services. It's gotten better but of all of Windows Phone's problems since it launched in 2010, this problem is the one that just hasn't improved enough.
 
Microsoft is where developers go to die. I used to think EA was bad, but took a close look at what MS did to Rare, Lionhead, Ensemble Studios, Bungie, and probably more than I care to remember.
 
heatlesssun said:
In forward facing consumer tech, Microsoft is always late to the party. On the back end, Microsoft is much more innovative. Started getting into Azure more after some Windows 8 developer training I took last week. There is some super slick stuff there, probably why Microsoft's cloud business is going so well and why Nadella become CEO as he came from that business.

This is a good buy for Microsoft. I think they need to pick up a few more gaming companies, especially in the mobile space.
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He was being sarcastic, the point is being a few years late to the party is so utterly characteristic of Microsoft.
 
caddys83 said:
RIP Minecraft :(
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Minecraft has been on the small spiral down ever since it peaked. Anyways it's not like they could mess up minecraft anymore than it already is, not like notch is known for his quality coding. There is a reason why another studio handles the ports it's a pretty inept team working just off ideas to try to keep updating without scaring off the core audience. Essentially pulling out the COD strategy
Ashbringer said:
Gotta make a backup of it before the game goes to hell. I know a lot of people here probably don't understand Minecraft but it's a pioneering game. It should be revolutionizing the gaming industry but no game developers seem to be looking at it for example. Lots of clones but nothing trying to do Minecrafts example of destructible and constructable environments.
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Clones don't work because minecraft is working like an MMO being the first success. Simply a self feeding loop, people play minecraft because it's popular it's popular because people play it. Which is fed by locked in minecrafters who stream on twitch.tv or play on youtube.com.
SPARTAN VI said:
Microsoft is where developers go to die. I used to think EA was bad, but took a close look at what MS did to Rare, Lionhead, Ensemble Studios, Bungie, and probably more than I care to remember.
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Rare was proped up by Nintendo IP without it it fell back to where it should have been all along, it also never made a ton of money because it was so tied to nintendo prior to microsoft's buyout. LionHead was butchered into just the Fable Studio it should branch out more as it was great for it's creative take on games. Microsoft made Bungie what it is and they aren't owned by microsoft haven't been for years i think 2008? As for Ensemble all they did before microsoft bought them out was Age of Empires I and II. It's hard to say microsoft killed the studio or simply the studio didn't have anything past that and floundered on it's own.

Microsoft gets a bad rap because it tends to favor buying out studios instead of starting them on their own. They also favor buying IP off studios as opposed to creating them on their own, overall it's because they seem to lack vision or try that they get bashed.
 
There are plenty of minecraft clones(literal clones, and those that are just similar). The problem isn't that there aren't minecraft clones, no one wants those. What minecraft needs(aside from getting the hell away from java), is a proper modding API. With the halfassed mod capability that currently exists, people have done some pretty cool things with minecraft from new game modes, to integrated quest systems like a typical RPG.

Unfortunately, not only has mojang been dirt slow about proper mod tools, there was the legal mess over their EULA recently, and modded servers. Where apparently idiot kids would login, then borrow daddy's credit card to get themselves a diamond sword on the minecraft pokemon server they play on. It's essentially a gray(possibly black) market of DLC with zero oversight(since any joe schmoe can run a server, sell crap, then disappear no questions asked, compared to say.. yes... even EA has to follow through on some things).

Then on top of that, they've got a couple idiot employees who post about company related things on their personal blogs, causing additional drama within the already meager mod and modded server development community.

"Notch" is apparently unwilling to take his company by the balls and get their crap together, so it's not like MS would make things worse going forward. In fact, I think MS would actually be capable of resolving a number of Mojang's issues(the massive exception being a proper mod API), so it might not be a half bad idea if Mojang doesn't want to do anything on their own.
 
I see good and bad things coming from this. MSFT does have a bad track record with other game companies they have acquired. Will Notch want to work for them? Doubtful. (However, it seems he is very distant from Minecraft and has other people working on it - so might not be a loss).

Good: clean up the mod community, servers, roll out features quicker. Why hasn't Mojang made Minecraft 2.0 yet or possible spin-offs? I would assume Microsoft would want an update for Xbox One, maybe Windows. What will they do for the PlayStation and iOS versions? We will see.

My kids play the game a lot - mainly on an Xbox 360. They watch YouTube videos (hello Stampy) and learn new things. I hope the community is not driven away.
 
tetris42 said:
He was being sarcastic, the point is being a few years late to the party is so utterly characteristic of Microsoft.
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I know. I was simply saying that this is a perception, especially these days due to Microsoft's slowness in current mobile tech. When it comes to the back end and productivity, it's a different story. Even in the mobile space, Microsoft was years ahead of Apple and Google with its first commercial smartphone offerings.

Everyone identifies with Apple's and Google's mobile hardware these days and Google's search engine, areas where Microsoft is extremely weak to non-existent besides XBox and to a far lesser extent Bing. Areas of Microsoft's strength like Windows Server, SharePoint, Azure and Office, where they are a bit ahead game aren't consumer and don't get the ink. I think in a lot of ways that's why Microsoft wants to have a consumer face. ABC isn't going to do an interview about something like Azure, which it well beyond the understanding of most people, even a lot of techies that reject cloud tech.
 
What a waste of good capital. Minecraft is worth 2 billion? With a B? Is our dollar that worthless?
 
Semantics said:
Clones don't work because minecraft is working like an MMO being the first success. Simply a self feeding loop, people play minecraft because it's popular it's popular because people play it. Which is fed by locked in minecrafters who stream on twitch.tv or play on youtube.com.
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I have no doubt something is eventually going to displace it, but for now I have not found a better Minecraft than Minecraft. There are a lot of minecraft-likes out there that I'm watching. None of them are quite "there" yet. They don't have the basic multiplayer, amount of content, or accessibility that MC has.
 
heatlesssun said:
This is a good buy for Microsoft. I think they need to pick up a few more gaming companies, especially in the mobile space.
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Overpaying for a one hit wonder studio that will never release another meaningful title, onky you would consider that a good buy and only because its Microsoft. :)

I'd rather see MS take that money and rebuild from the ground up what is currently the ugliest touch UI on the planet.
 
Borgschulze said:
Good for Notch, glad he's made his fortune by accident.

Would be nice if we could all be as well off.
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Yup, this sort of thing always makes me happy. I'm sure he never dreamed of something like this coming about. Life can be funny-cool like that.
 
heatlesssun said:
The problem for Windows Phone right now is market share, market share, market share. Microsoft was just too late in the game of modern smart phones, but they have taken just about every step they can to catch up. Windows Phone 8.1 is pretty much on feature parity with iOS and Android, the licensing is now free and Microsoft has made it much easier for OEMs to reuse Android devices and repurpose them with Windows Phone. And with the arrival of Windows 9, Windows Phone and RT will be exactly the same OS so it will be easier to target Windows phones, tablets and PC simultaneously.

But the market share gap is creating a big app gap from the top tier developers and services. It's gotten better but of all of Windows Phone's problems since it launched in 2010, this problem is the one that just hasn't improved enough.
Click to expand...

MS has never been the first one in. I find that Microsoft simply haven't given the consumer that added value in its ecosystem (Windows and the Windows phone integrated,) and it's going to be an uphill fight for Microsoft to make Windows 9 do just that. iOS/OSX integration has a massive lead when it comes to perception, branding and vendor approved hardware as things stand today.
 
GaryJohnson said:
I have no doubt something is eventually going to displace it, but for now I have not found a better Minecraft than Minecraft. There are a lot of minecraft-likes out there that I'm watching. None of them are quite "there" yet. They don't have the basic multiplayer, amount of content, or accessibility that MC has.
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In general that's how clones/competing products work unless it's something truly different or just vastly superior people don't adopt the new/different thing because it is just that different. You have invested time to learn the current thing so you don't see the value in changing.

I doubt Microsoft could save minecraft from it's eventual downfall(which could yeah be a few years off). Similar to Blizzard's struggle to keep people playing WoW, eventually people will just get bored of the genre and look for something else. Mojang's studio attempt at pre-capturing that already failed, Scrolls is so far behind Hearthstone in popularity, plus Hearthstone caters to an important audience, women.

The best MS could do is clean up and polish Minecraft, I have no faith that microsoft could revitalize a franchise. Their history is not to create IP but to push out sequels.
 
fdiaz78 said:
What a waste of good capital. Minecraft is worth 2 billion? With a B? Is our dollar that worthless?
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Look at all of the Microsoft employees laid off.
Then Microsoft (the CEOs) go and purchase Minecraft for $2 billion.

Shows you where Microsoft's priorities are at.
I truly pity every employee, CEOs excluded, which works for Microsoft.
 
heatlesssun said:
I know. I was simply saying that this is a perception, especially these days due to Microsoft's slowness in current mobile tech. When it comes to the back end and productivity, it's a different story. Even in the mobile space, Microsoft was years ahead of Apple and Google with its first commercial smartphone offerings.

Everyone identifies with Apple's and Google's mobile hardware these days and Google's search engine, areas where Microsoft is extremely weak to non-existent besides XBox and to a far lesser extent Bing. Areas of Microsoft's strength like Windows Server, SharePoint, Azure and Office, where they are a bit ahead game aren't consumer and don't get the ink. I think in a lot of ways that's why Microsoft wants to have a consumer face. ABC isn't going to do an interview about something like Azure, which it well beyond the understanding of most people, even a lot of techies that reject cloud tech.
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Well you are right on MS being way ahead on tablets and smartphones, and could be write about the others, I'm not familiar with those. As for Office, I'd say that's iffier since Wordperfect was out years before Word, depends on what timespan you're looking at. Besides that though here's what I tend to think of:

Internet Explorer: years late to the party
Zune: years late to the party
Games for Windows Live: years late to the party AND awful
Windows App store: years late to the party (thank god)
Good GUI scaling on Windows for high dpi display: STILL not here yet
Skype: you could argue they were there with MSN messenger, but that's a hell of a headstart for them to still not to be competitive
DirectX 12: (API with lower overhead) years late to the party

I think if you look at everything MS has pioneered v. what they've been pretty late to do, the latter will definitely outweigh things.
 
We recently got a Surface Pro 3 at work. I like it, but I'm disappointed to be honest -- and I've always wanted a Surface Pro :(

Microsoft really needs to improve on DPI scaling for high resolutions. While the Surface Pro blows Apple's tablet products away in function, horsepower, and capability, it can't go without at least giving Apple the credit that they did a wonderful job with iOS in universal fitting and excellent user experience with highly minimal learning curve
 
This is k-razee insane rumor-mongering at its best-er, worst...;) (Really funny, though--can't make this stuff up. Heh...) Has to be a nuts rumor and nothing more.......'course, Microsoft did offer to buy Yahoo! for forty-billion-lunatic-dollars-and-change...! But that was Ballmer's nonsense and he's gone--and the only reason Microsoft escaped that particular, incredible display of primal stupidity was because the Yahoo! founder was even crazier than Ballmer--and turned down the incredible I-was-looped-when-I-made-it offer.

For $2B Microsoft could build a vast gaming studio from the ground up, stocked deep with great talent and able to rake in the dough--or *several* other things that come to mind. I cannot believe there's a shred of truth to this rumor--and I would certainly laugh it off had not the Yahoo! deal come so close to amounting to a $40B mistake.

Hell, to spend $10B and pickup AMD I could understand as the possibilities for Microsoft would increase enormously and instantly (but whether Microsoft would have the slightest idea as to what to do with AMD, of course, is a whole other question...;))--but spending $2B to acquire the rights to sell homely D3d6-level Lego blocks games? (If you believe that then you also might believe that birds fly well in the Van Allen belts.)

Why is it that some folks with a few billion bucks in the bank reportedly have such a hard time spending it wisely?...:confused: But, in this case I'm "going out on a limb" and take a "wild guess" and say that this information is entirely bogus...Microsoft cannot possibly have become this idiotic....uh, well...(yea, but Win8 was an aberration, right??? and gee whiz, the Yahoo! fiasco never actually happened, right?:eek:)

(Don't you just love it when people use the word "Report" to attempt to lend credence to something that is otherwise less credible than pigs flying in the Van Allen belts? "Joystiq click-bait" no doubt about it.) I'll try a few on, myself...

Report: Sun to rise in West, set in North in 2016 because of Global Warming
Report: Joystiq officially declared White House press agent and deported-er, sent to Middle east
Report: Polar ice caps will be completely gone by April 1 2015
Report: People sometimes believe incredibly bizarre Internet "reports" when they see them
 
Microsoft put another knife in the back of PC gamers. How long before it's a console, and metro app only game?

RIP Minecraft. My condolences to all those who work at Majang, who wanted to make good PC games.

Congratulations to Notch, for the $2 billion.
 
like noone uses "mini" or "micro" anymore because everything is "nano" these days, prices are given in billions now. if banks and governments are mentioned simultaneously, we have pretty much moved to trillions by now.
 
Semantics said:
Clones don't work because minecraft is working like an MMO being the first success. Simply a self feeding loop, people play minecraft because it's popular it's popular because people play it. Which is fed by locked in minecrafters who stream on twitch.tv or play on youtube.com.
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I still play Minecraft cause I actually enjoy the game. A project will pop in my head and then I just try to build it in game. And they do update the game enough that I always come back to see what's new.

But Minecraft clones aren't what I'm talking about but about games that have a system that allow for the environment to be created and destroyed. Minecrafts 8-bit like graphics are nice but I would love to see a highly realistic looking version with more purpose.
 
Maybe a stupid question but would M$ do this just to get Minecraft off of the PS4?
Just to keep Minecraft an XBOX only console port?
I see no other value for M$ in doing this.
 
minecraft was released on ps4 on 9/3. i'm not sure keeping on xbox would be a deal breaker for a significant enough amount of people that have already decided to go with the ps4. in my mind that is kind of like not making office or encarta for apple products.
 
elian440 said:
so the $2billion from facebook to oculus was bad, but this $2billion is good?
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The game generated over 300 million for the company last year, up 38% from the year before. If anything, selling their golden goose for 2B may be too low.
 
Borgschulze said:
Good for Notch, glad he's made his fortune by accident.

Would be nice if we could all be as well off.
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If everybody had 2 billion, nobody would have 2 billion. There will always be plebs. Just be happy a rich guy can't just cut your head off for no reason in this day and age. He can foreclose on your house, though. Still, it's progress, mate.
 
Hopefully Minecraft will be modified so that it won't be consuming so many processing cycles due to software rendering through Java. I have a Core i7 and Minecraft consumes about 60% of it and uses 3GB memory. Of course I also maximize all graphic features, but still.
 
DPI said:
The game generated over 300 million for the company last year, up 38% from the year before. If anything, selling their golden goose for 2B may be too low.
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i just meant that notch was so critical of oculus for taking that facebook cash, but he's ok with taking his own version of that situation. not saying i would do different or that he is a bad person, just the first thing that came to mind was that things are different when your name is on that check.
 
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