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Report: Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Studio For $2bn+
dotarray (1747900) writes "A surprising story has emerged today that suggests Microsoft is looking to buy Minecraft developer Mojang. The reported price tag is "more than US$2 billion."
The original report is at the WSJ (possibly behind a paywall). Quoting: "For Microsoft, "Minecraft" could reinvigorate the company's 13-year-old Xbox videogame business by giving it a cult hit with a legion of young fans. Mojang has sold more than 50 million copies of "Minecraft" since it was initially released in 2009 and earned more than $100 million in profits last year from the game and merchandise. "Minecraft" is already available on the Xbox, as well as Sony Corp.'s PlayStation, PCs and smartphones."
Please. No.
I mean seriously, why would you want Mojang? Minecraft itself has already made most of its money. You'd never make $2 billion on it going forward, it's big sales have already happened. So you'd be buying the talent/IP for future games... ya, about that. Mojang seems to have little or nothing at all in the pipe to speak of. 0x10c has gone all of nowhere, Scrolls has very little interest anymore and that's about it.
When you look at Minecraft, particularly what it started as, where it came from (Infiniminer) and how much has come form community contribution, it is fairly apparent that Notch is not some genius game designer, he just had the right idea at the right time, and got lucky that it went viral. Minecraft was not some amazing feat of design, it was a digital lego game that struck a chord with people. Fair enough, and he deserves his success, but that isn't the kind of thing worth buying in to, particularly given 0x10c's complete lack of development.
I can't see what MS hopes to gain. Maybe the Minecraft name? I guess, in theory, that is worth some money but I don't really think so. I think people will happily play a good builder game, regardless of title.
Just seems like a bad use of money to me.
Not just software licenses. Licenses to print sticker, to make kids' notebooks and BMX bikes and a billion other shitty things from China with Minecraft-branded content. It's the brand they want- probably don't give a shit about the game itself.
Why do these successful companies allow themselves to be bought up by behemoths who almost never improve upon them? Is it just so the current owners can retire?
Especially Microsoft, whose modus operandi has been shown again and again to be embrace, extend, extinguish.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
They should have bought minecraft years ago then. Back when the hype was starting and they could have gotten it for a couple million.
Kinda curious as to how they're going to screw it up.
Forced windows 8 integration?
Port the x-box port back to windows and drop the java version?
Mandatory Realms hosting for multiplayer so they can police it and add microtransactions for diamonds? "10 credits = 1 diamond. Or buy a pack and save! Available packs include the 64 diamond Stack Pack, the 574 diamond Block Stack Pack, or the best value the Diamond Block Dick To Pierce The Skies pack!"
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Oh, hard luck Microsoft, you've just run afoul of my country's fair trading act.
Part of my purchase decision was that Minecraft would be released open source or public domain.
You've just purchased some very high punitive fines.
Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. I'm not very happy with the draconian nature of (L)GPL, nor do I believe the other licenses have much merit other than to boost the egos of the original authors, so I might just possibly release it all as public domain.
MS is trying to have a say in the VR game and they think Minecraft would be a nice entry point.
Microsoft is a dying old fart company, much like Hewlett-Packard. What they can't earn with innovation is being replaced with attempted acquisitions. Unfortunately, all that they acquire is typically destroyed with no revenue to the bottom line. Acquire, lay off the people, destroy, forget. Management by "bean counters" vs. the ability to invent. Sad but the state of large cranky corporations of the day.
But funny thing about money, people always want more.
Another issue is that enabling server-side mods means players don't have to buy anything at all. I didn't have to pay for the mods, but even if I did, me paying once would be far cheaper than players having to buy them individually.
I had all sorts of things on my server -- giants, creepers started fires, skeleton arrows could blind you, spiders could poison you, zombies could make you hungry and/or cause the Wither effect, nearby explosions would cause you to become dizzy, there were "space zombies" with glass helmets and 5x the health wandering around (in the Nether too). Monsters would target you from 27 blocks away rather than 16. There were Elementals, invisible monsters, and flying carpets. I also nerfed the enchantments to reduce the power differences between well-equipped and just-starting-out players. That way I didn't have to crank the difficulty up quite as high, and the n00bs could live a little longer. There were shops, and there was an economy. We had mcMMO. We had trading posts stocked with villagers. We had minecarts on the backs of bats, so you could ride in a random aerial pattern if you felt like it. We had bouncy blocks that would catapult you into the air. I added drops (for example, blazes would drop quartz, and magma cubes could drop regular slimeballs). One of my admins made uncraftable blocks such as circle stone and packed ice expensive but available through stores.
The effect of any one of these mods was minor, but taken as a sum, they made up an environment unlike any other Minecraft server. What was the player required to do to enable all of these changes? Absolutely nothing. Just sign on and play.
This is anathema to the DLC business model. Therefore, it can't be monetized by the company producing the game. Mojang was OK with that. (I wasn't running Pay-To-Win.) Microsoft most likely won't be.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.