Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang For $2.5 Billion

jawtheshark writes The rumors were true. Mojang, the company behind Minecraft, is being sold to Microsoft. Of course, the promise is to keep all products supported as they are. From the article: "Microsoft said it has agreed to buy Mojang AB, the Swedish video game company behind the hit Minecraft game, boosting its mobile efforts and cementing control of another hit title for its Xbox console. Minecraft, which has notched about 50 million copies sold, will be purchased by Microsoft for $2.5 billion, the company said in a statement. The move marks the tech giant's most ambitious video game purchase and the largest acquisition for Satya Nadella, its new chief executive. Minecraft is more than a great game franchise - it is an open world platform, driven by a vibrant community we care deeply about, and rich with new opportunities for that community and for Microsoft,' Nadella said in a statement."

Comments

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[goarilla]

I've never "played" minecraft, but I guess they are buying this at this insane price for the marketing and data
mining possibilities.

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[ZombieBraintrust]

54 million sold already. Lets assume they can sell the same amount for Minecraft 2. If they priced it at $10 they would make half a billion. They can probably make more money off DLC on the existing game. And make money off DLC for Minecraft 2. Then there is stuffed creapers and toys. They are still loosing money at 2.5 billion. Was good deal for Notch.

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[Sockatume]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that goarilla was actually just making an atrocious data-mining pun.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they sell Minecraft 2 for only $10? The current version is $26.95 USD on the PC and $20 on the console. I can easily see MS charging $40 - $60 for a game that is bound to be popular. Hell, the new SIMS game will run you $60, you can bet MS is planning to milk this. Plus they can then release Minecraft 3 two years later and do the whole thing again :p

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[Anonymous Coward]

Price Minecraft 2 at $10? More like $50-60. And you will have to buy DLC on top of that. And a Xbox One or Windows tablet.

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[rasmusbr]

It's no secret that Mojang is developing a pay to play kind of add-on called Realms. The idea is that people who want to have a Minecraft server for themselves and their friends can pay Mojang to host the server and take care of the technical details.

There are probably somewhere between 10 and 100 million Minecraft players. Suppose that 1% will subscribe to Realms at $4.99 a month (currently €10). That would yield between 500k and 5M in monthly revenue, or about 6M to 60M in yearly revenue.

Minecraft would probably be worth a few hundred million dollars in a sane market.

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[Anonymous Coward]

> at this insane price

I don't think 8x their current yearly profit is insane. Especially given the additional marketing opportunities.

For instance, you still can't buy a Minecraft backpack at Target.

There is plenty of money to be made.

In a day where whatsapp is being paid $19 billion? Microsoft got a dream deal.

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[ZombieBraintrust]

The mobile price is under $10. A $60 price would sell less copies than a $10 version. Also $10 makes the math easy. :)

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[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.hottopic.com/hottopic/Minecraft+Creeper+Backpack-10136007.jsp

I still think the price is insane...

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[Tyr07]

Unless of course....

Because you purchased the name, you can develop Minecraft 2, DLC content for the original or a sequel, and the players
who already purchased Minecraft will likely purchase a sequel..meaning....it's worth the purchase.

Clones don't do so well, because those who are interested in that kind of game, I will make a broad assumption here, won't hide it, probably own Minecraft,
and the clones can't compete with the current modding community. So it's hard to take off.

But owning the name Minecraft, that's huge.

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[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Yeah, but you're missing out on a few things like the value of the name Minecraft.

Minecraft has spawned a lot of merch, as an example of brand value. Shirts, hats, toys, blind bags, key rings, foam swords and pick axes, etc. etc.

That 2.5 billion isn't going to pay off right away. But it will pay off.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Minecraft would probably be worth a few hundred million dollars in a sane market.

They had over 300 million in revenue last year alone and have been growing by ~100 million year over year for the last few years.

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[funwithBSD]

Even Lego sets.

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[ArcadeMan]

I've never "played" minecraft, but I guess they are buying this at this insane price for the marketing and data
mining possibilities.

I see what you did there.

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[Raumkraut]

Because you purchased the name, you can develop Minecraft 2

And so a whole new generation of gamers will learn the pain and heartache of a loved name from their childhood getting ruined by a poorly-thought-out corporate-developed sequel.

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[ArcadeMan]

Minecraft: the flamethrower. The kids love this one.

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[rasmusbr]

Yeah, but how long can they keep growing? How long can they even sustain the revenue that they have now?

Game purchases are one-time payments. I'm not going to buy a second copy of Minecraft for PC, nor am I buying a second copy of Pocked Edition and I'm not in the market for console games.

Long-term revenue has to come from recurring payments (subscriptions), or maybe from selling Creeper plush toys and t-shirts as some have suggested.

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[PIBM]

They purchased mojang. That usually includes the cash on hand and monetary assets. Recent estimates I've seen were talking of 1.5B in tangible assets for Mojang. Thus, it's a 1B premium, meaning that they value the profits per year for the following years at 150-160M, which is very easy to reach with that license.

Minecraft has sold more than 100 million copies, every of them having the possibility for paying for a minecraft realm monthly to share their creations. A lot more people can buy the game. Then, if it start fading away, they will be able to grab a lot of money with minecraft 2.

Finally, they can also use this license to push their devices for which there was no minecraft before. Optimized for Windows Phone!@

This is not an insane amount at all, compared to the twitch buyout or such..

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[Stele]

Or the ever popular Minecraft-themed Bag of Glass.

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[Culture20]

And so a whole new generation of gamers will learn the pain and heartache of a loved name from their childhood getting ruined by a poorly-thought-out corporate-developed sequel.

At least Star Control 3 wasn't a poorly thought out corporate developed sequel. The melee was so well thought out that there was an A.I. override built in and advertised in the manual to make the A.I. ships act suicidal. That takes planning.

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[ZombieBraintrust]

Why would Notch leave 1.5B in cash in Mojang. He has like 40 employees and pays the rent on 1 building. Minecraft is the 1.5B tangible asset. Mojang could sell Minecraft to another developer for 1.5B. After selling Minecraft away there isn't a way for Microsoft to make another billion off Mojang.

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[HetMes]

Yes, I too believe I can make a better estimation of the value of Mojang in 3 seconds than an entire specialized Microsoft department over the course of a few months.

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[Anonymous Coward]

There are probably somewhere between 10 and 100 million Minecraft players.

I can personally testify that I have met more than 10 Minecraft players just myself.

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[alexander_686]

I think Minecraft has "legs" and will be around for a while. Longer than Farmville 2, less than Legos.

But I do think it says something about Microsoft. They are having a hard time growing organically, which is the curse of many large mature companies. These companies tend to expand by buyouts and mergers, which we are seeing here. Buyouts and mergers have a poor history of returns on investments.

I think Microsoft is trying for a single or double and not a home run. Maybe a 25% return over 5 years.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Forget 1%, it'll be much lower. Many people have multiple copies of Minecraft. They'll have if for a PC, an iOS and Android device, perhaps a console. Each is a separate purchase and each may be used very regularly. As soon as they try pay2play, the product will go back to being niche. The vast majority of "players" are children.

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[L4m3rthanyou]

Minecraft is already well established, there's no need to bother with gimmicks like DLC or any need to pay for development with an upfront purchase price. Such an approach would be a waste of the game's convenient addictiveness.

After corporate meddling pisses off most of the core Mojang developers enough to jump ship, Microsoft will drop in a new default resource pack, maybe add another boss or two to the game, and sell it as "Minecraft 2.0". Realms will be the only multiplayer option, and the game will be sold as a monthly subscription rather than an upfront purchase.

The game's popularity will probably tank at that point, but not so much that MS doesn't get something for it. Much of the existing community will probably stick with the latest 1.x release, or perhaps the latest Bukkit-supported version

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[GNious]

They are purchasing this to get Minecraft on the Windows Phone-no-longer-called-Phone platform, in the hope that people will buy their devices to play Minecraft on.

Yes, I'm not actually bullshitting you on that one.

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[Anonymous Coward]

unlike the total fucking morons over at snapchat, these guys at minecraft know when to sell. please don't hurt yourself carrying all that money to the bank.

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[datavirtue]

Minecraft is fairly vulnerable though. The kids are eagerly exploring different block games--these same kids loath Microsoft for some reason. My son who is 11 starts dropping the Microsoft hate one day and I play the devil's advocate explaining all of the cool stuff Microsoft offers. Still hates Microsoft. He got this from hanging with his friends online. These kids have no loyalty to games unless they get something from it that they cant get somewhere else. When my son hears of Microsoft buying Minecraft it should be comical.

http://www.roblox.com/

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[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

This deserves infinite mod points.

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[_anomaly_]

Don't forget a Minecraft-themed Johnny Switchblade and, of course, Bass 'o Matic (not a toy, but everyone will want one)!

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[Anonymous Coward]

No, Microsoft will charge $64+ per copy, remove the ability to mod, the world will move on to the next fad.

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[Stormy Dragon]

Thus, it's a 1B premium, meaning that they value the profits per year for the following years at 150-160M, which is very easy to reach with that license.

Is it? Minecraft has doesn't really have characters, game universe, lore, etc. that would emotionally tie players to that specific product line. All it has is a concept, and you can't IP a game concept to prevent competitors from making their own sandbox building games.

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[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck! (testing)

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[loufoque]

Minecraft is a simplistic game any software developer can code in 6 months.
It has zero value.

What they bought is the community.

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[PIBM]

All it has is a license; as you said the concept itself can't be protected. Minecraft itself was a derivate, and there are many clones. 2.5B might appear be a high price, even more if I had misunderstood the tangible assets real value. But still, I can much more easily value mojang / minecraft / realms / scrolls to 2.5B than I could give a 1B valuation to twitch..

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[steelfood]

Notch recently paid his employees a ton of money, so I imagine there's not as much cash on hand as you'd think. There might be tangible assets (servers, etc.) and intellectual assets (software, Minecraft brand, licensing deals, etc.), but $2.5B is a bit much for just that. Since they just launched Realms, they might have ~$500M cash set aside to keep it afloat, but that's really a stretch considering how cheap hardware is becoming.

Microsoft has been known to overpay for useless junk (they've had hits too), so there's precedence already. I wouldn't say Minecraft is useless junk, especially if they can do a Minecraft 2 exclusive for XBox and Windows Phone, but to think that they'd recoup the $2.5B easily would be foolish. Microsoft would be smart to treat this as a 10-, 20-year thing like The Sims and just continue building out the brand over that time while using it to promote their other products. But Microsoft's done some dumb (and some really, really dumb) moves over the past 3-5 years, so this might just be wishful thinking on my part.

10 bucks says the devs are going to add a new mob in the next version called Clippy.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not so sure here. Minecraft continues to be a great educational game for a young age group, and even gets used in some regions of Sweden in the school systems. As such, it seems to have a bit more potential at continuing to rake in new sales, despite now being a good few years old.

Of course, that's until something comes and dethrones it. But as far as games with it's diverse educational potential as well as being remotely as interesting to kids as Minecraft has been, I can't say I've seen any real contenders.

I just have to wonder what this'll mean about the easy-to-pirate nature Minecraft has had thus far, thanks in part to Notch's Pirate Party affiliation (he's specifically attributed much of Minecraft's success to piracy, and indeed, nearly everyone I know that's bought the game did so only after pirating it). Microsoft has historically had an, erm, differing opinion on such matters.

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[steelfood]

To be fair, EA did fairly well with their sequels up until the past 2-3 years. Even The Sims 4 isn't horrible, though some say it's a step backwards from The Sims 3.

Funny thing, all this really started to happen these past 2-3 years. Prior to that, the majority of sequels were an improvement.

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[Anonymous Coward]

If it were just that, then MS could have paid Mojang far far less than $2.5B to do that. So I am going to say this is about more than just getting Minecraft on Lumias.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anon to preserve mods, but I just wanted to chime in that Star Control 3 is the worst "terrible sequel" I've ever seen. I hate you for reminding me that it ever existed.

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[pnutjam]

I was just at Target this weekend, they had several minecraft branded toys. My son has a minecraft baby pig we purchased at kmart at least 6 months ago.

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[LostMyBeaver]

Or one could figure that Microsoft has a clear plan to capitalize and $2.5 was worth it to them. They will own a company that has done a better job the last few years on family games than Lego and Nintendo combined. Imagine if they had the resources of Microsoft.

Bash MS all you want, but XBox has been a pretty popular and successful gig. If anything, Sony was idiotic to let Microsoft beat them to this.

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[slashdice]

Is this the same specialized Microsoft department that valued skype?

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[Anonymous Coward]

And the ability to sue any knockoff minecraft clone that ends up looking a little too much like minecraft.

And I hope they accounted for breaking up of said community they purchased. I don't see myself following Microsoft if they screw up what we already have going. And I fully see them doing that to try to make back the money they spent.

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[Luckyo]

Let me help you. Minecraft is where Lego was a couple of decades ago. Not something adults play with much, but something that is absolutely HUGE with young boys.

They're not buying this for "ads". They are buying this to get access to massive amount of young boys who are going to grow up, and who can typically influence their parents to buy them the game and subscription to a paid server.

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[ZombieBraintrust]

Ohh I didn't mean my statement as a bash on Microsoft. Personally I think Mojang was too small to take the game where I want it to go. Mojang was just doing incremental improvements like adding bunnies and new types of dirt. I think Microsoft could put 200 people on it and makes something on the scale of grand theft auto.

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[Luckyo]

Lego was a toy set that any toy maker could throw together in six months.

Yet it was lego that was massive among young boys back in the day, just like minecraft is massive among that very same audience today.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I know... everybody knows. Minecraft is moving to a subscription/item store revenue model.

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[rasmusbr]

Mojang had 1.5 billion SEK in cash at the end of 2013, or about 220M USD at 2013 exchange rates. Their turnower for 2013 was 2 billion SEK or about 300 million USD.

Source: http://www.allabolag.se/556819...

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[rasmusbr]

Sorry, that should obviously be revenue and not turnover. Swedish financial lingo is easy to mistranslate.

Would have been funny though...

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[Anonymous Coward]

Great the aewsome java game will be ported over to .net, get ready for a slew of bugs.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I can personally testify that I have met more than 10 Minecraft players just myself.

That's just 10 people you yourself know. If everyone knew just 10 people who play Minecraft, and with a population of around 7 billion people, that's potentially 70 BILLION potential customers!

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[KermodeBear]

Microtransactions, coming to a Minecraft release near you.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're doing it again. The value of skype is hard to judge. The customer base alone is worth a lot. It's a network effect thing. The name alone is also worth a lot. Ask a random person if they know what voip is, then ask if they've heard of skype. Throw in the actual technology and engineers and you might just have something of value.

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[Bing Tsher E]

If Microsoft pulls it off right, they could even get positive mindshare, or at least some goodwill with the youth demographic out of this.

If you check the Minecraft forums today, there are some very hardened anti-Microsoft players venting in the 'MC buys MC' thread. Filtering these people out and actually earning some cred with other portions of the community would be gold for Microsoft. Also, if Microsoft bungles it, the fallout will be more severe than the marketing people at MS could imagine.

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[Stoutlimb]

Microsoft got spread so well in the early days partially because it was so easy to copy.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has always grown by acquisition. Even MS-DOS was purchased. Buyouts and mergers may have a poor history of returns on investments in general, but not for MS. That's one thing they're good at.

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[alexander_686]

Maybe when MSFT was young and desktops were new, but can you give me an example in the past 10 years? Past 20? Nook, Nokia, Skype? None of these have been a home run. MSFT has been growing been very slow over the past 10 years. IIRC, MSFT stock price has been growing slower than the S&P average. (It's late so I am not looking it up.)

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[Anonymous Coward]

Well there is the lava bucket...what could go wrong?!

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[Ktek]

The part you are missing about running a server is that don't have to use realms. You can run your own right now for free. You just download the server software and it's a fairly easy setup. I run one on a spare machine for my family. I can see Microsoft cutting that off quickly and setting up a per user license fee. There are endless free mods, skins, and servers to access. None of that fits in to the Microsoft business model. Minecraft is, or was, everything Microsoft is not.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Better go after Infiniminer first.

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[Psykechan]

From Microsoft's press release:

Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will acquire Mojang for $2.5 billion. Microsoft expects the acquisition to be break-even in FY15 on a GAAP basis.

They expect this to pay off in a year.

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[jones_supa]

Minecraft is a simplistic game any software developer can code in 6 months.
It has zero value.

Only extremely skilled and highly motivated developers can create something like Minecraft in 6 months. For most, it would take 6 years.

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[Anonymous Coward]

There are probably somewhere between 10 and 100 million Minecraft players.

I can personally testify that I have met more than 10 Minecraft players just myself.

You know ALL of the Minecraft players.. Amazing!

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[Tyr07]

[quote]And so a whole new generation of gamers will learn the pain and heartache of a loved name from their childhood getting ruined by a poorly-thought-out corporate-developed sequel.[/quote]

No idea how that's a mod funny....

But I'm not going to tell you that it won't be ruined, or that it'll be fantastic. I have no idea about it, we can all make assumptions, but really I have no idea.
And neither do you.

Microsoft has released some fantastic games, and some other not so good ones. So I'd sit back, wait and see. If it's terrible, don't buy it, if you think it looks like fun, buy it.

It's like the internet in general, if content offends you, stop looking at it and let it be.

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[Bing Tsher E]

Minecraft doesn't have a persistent internet connection while running. Most of the server infrastructure in Minecraft is third-party. There's a login when you start the game to authenticate your copy, but a login server is much smaller than a Microtransaction server connected to the game all the time.

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[ComputersKai]

Unless they're the same 10 people... :3

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[PeterJamesFoote]

Re: mob named "Clippy". Heard that name was discarded in favor of "Jar Jar Clinks"...

An end to XBox?

[gameboyhippo]

I wonder if this is a step towards becoming a software company since they haven't done so well in the device industry... especially in Japan.

Re:An end to XBox?

[Therad]

Xbox has never sold well in japan. If anything, the real problem for the game division is the lower than projected sales in the other territories.

Re:An end to XBox?

[Neo-Rio-101]

Japanese people buy Japanese brands out of national loyalty.
They only make exceptions for "luxury" brands (like Apple).
Everything released by a foreign company where there is a Japanese equivalent product will fail.

Re:An end to XBox?

[Xest]

I doubt Microsoft cares how it does in Japan nowadays, Japan stopped being a relevant indicator of the health of a video game industry entrant about 10 years ago. Since then both the US and subsequently Europe became bigger markets by far, and even markets like Brasil and China are arguably more worth spending your time on now than Japan if you're in that industry. Japan's two decades of economic stagnation have really hit it's relevance to the industry hard in this respect - the struggling Wii U and Sony's precarious overall financials (The PS4 is doing well though thankfully) have only exacerbated the problem.

Despite their mis-steps this generation they actually did well last generation in the end in large part because they were pulling in over $1bn of pure profit from Xbox Live subscriptions alone within a few years of the launch of the 360. This couple with the highest attach rate by a decent margin coupled with higher profits-per-game than the Wii last generation allowed them to be more profitable despite not shifting anywhere near as many consoles as the Wii did.

Whether they'll keep doing well is anyone's guess, but the XBox division is currently a massively different beast compared to how it started last generation with it's RROD writeoffs and massive initial R&D expenses on the system.

There were rumours of them selling it off and such but I can't see them getting rid of it now that it's finally been a healthy net profit centre for a good few years now - it would seem odd to invest 10 years on profitably making your way into a key target area for Microsoft - the living room - only to then give up when you've achieved your goals of decent market penetration and real actual profit, still, stranger things have happened so I guess we'll see.

Re:An end to XBox?

[Guspaz]

I once checked out the TV section of a Yodobashi Camera (and if you're ever in Japan, you really must visit a Yodobashi Camera, it's like every store of the floor is the size one or two BestBuy stores, except there's half a dozen floors or more). The brands of TVs on offer was very different from what you'd see outside of Japan. In most of the world, Korean brands like Samsung and LG are quite popular, but in that TV section (of what are probably the largest electronics stores in Japan), there was not a single non-Japanese television brand to be seen. Not a single Samsung or LG television was available.

Re:An end to XBox?

[Ash-Fox]

They only make exceptions for "luxury" brands (like Apple).

They don't have high standards for luxury apparently...

Re:An end to XBox?

[Daetrin]

Despite Microsoft supposedly saying that won't be the case, i'm more concerned that this will mean the end of Minecraft on PS3 and PS4. Either directly or through neglect. Microsoft may be behind in this console generation but they're definitely not out yet, and a "the only place where you can play the latest version of Minecraft" tagline might sell 100,000 or more extra consoles.

Re:An end to XBox?

[Blakey Rat]

... and why does/should Microsoft give a crap about Japan?

Hell, the Japanese game development community is so inbred at this point, it's almost a compliment to be rejected by them.

Re:An end to XBox?

[Dogtanian]

Funny you should say this. A while back I was thinking that- for this reason- MS should have "partnered" with a Japanese company for the original XBox launch there, paying them a cut of the profits there in exchange for "contributing" some token (but easily played-up) role in its "development" and the agreement to use that company's name prominently in marketing the product.

In reality they'd actually be paying the Japanese company near-free royalties in exchange for the right to use them as a trojan horse for the notoriously hard-to-break Japanese market. Yes, it might grate slightly, but 80% of ten times as much profit is still preferable in the long term. The exaggerated "development" role would be a way of countering accusations that the Japanese company were doing little more than marketing an American console... of course they weren't, it's well-known that they contributed significantly to the XBox joint-venture!

The agreement would have to have been drawn up carefully in advance (without being overly explicit about its cynical intent) to avoid MS being held hostage later on, and ultimately the XBox brand is the one that should be being promoted- the Japanese company's name being a means to get a foot in the door, and possibly phased out or reduced later on.

Re:An end to XBox?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Windows. (They use that now they didn't always).

That's that then

[Anonymous Coward]

See ya mincraft!

Re:That's that then

[mwvdlee]

1 down, 49,999,999 users left to go.
Lets keep this nerd rage going, and soon they'll have only 49,999,000 users left. That'll show them!

Re:That's that then

[Anonymous Coward]

I was actually planning on buying a 3rd license, but I will never do that now. Especially since they will kill the Linux version.

Re:That's that then

[__aanbvm4272]

Neber played it Neber will now. Think I'll invent a game called MineKraft about making beer...

Re:That's that then

[Anonymous Coward]

Think I'll invent a game called MineKraft about making beer...

Dibs on MeinKraft!

Re:That's that then

[Bayoudegradeable]

In your nerd rage you seem to have decided to say "see ya" to a lowercase e and spelling. Mind your passions, mate. or.... down with MINCRAFT!

Re:That's that then

[ziggystarsky]

But you have to craft ketchup then...

Re:That's that then

[NotInHere]

They didn't kill the Skype linux version yet: http://www.skype.com/en/downlo...

Re:That's that then

[ProzacPatient]

Play and develop the open source Minetest instead of Microsoft Minecraft.

Engine core is written in C++, with gameplay logic and world generation driven by Lua, is multiplayer already, uses the Irrlicht library for both OpenGL and DirectX support and runs on multiple platforms.

Re:That's that then

[Redmancometh]

Uhm...its java.

Re:That's that then

[Anonymous Coward]

"Minetest is an infinite-world block sandbox game and a game engine, inspired by InfiniMiner, Minecraft and the like."

"inspired"

"infiniminer"

"and the like"

What a bunch of bull fucking shit. It's a minecraft clone. I had trouble telling the top banner wasn't a minecraft screenshot.

Re:That's that then

[Anonymous Coward]

As another guy pointed out, Skype is still on Linux. Microsoft is willing to work with Linux, but there has to be a market for it. Since Minecraft already has the market, they don't have to do much to sustain it.

That said, Steam is making it so that you don't even need a specific port to Linux to run games. They're getting to the point where you can run a Windows-only game in Linux. I'm blocked right now from linking the information, but search for it yourself. It's really cool and will eliminate the barriers between OSes, drive down development costs and, yes, increase profits for Valve and all involved.

Re:That's that then

[Anonymous Coward]

and minecraft is nothing more than an infiniminer clone, but worse since they copied all game assets down to the pixel.

If you can't even tell what is the original and what is the clone/inspiration/whatever-the-fuck-you-wanna-call-it-today, should you really be putting your thoughts out there to prove you don't know what your talking about even on your own topics?

Re:That's that then

[mrmangosir559]

"Minetest is an infinite-world block sandbox game and a game engine, inspired by InfiniMiner, Minecraft and the like."

"inspired"

"infiniminer"

"and the like"

What a bunch of bull fucking shit. It's a minecraft clone. I had trouble telling the top banner wasn't a minecraft screenshot.

So may troll you in court, you've stolen their property. But seriously, all these clones I expect to see some getting letters to close down.

Re:That's that then

[Anonymous Coward]

Its written from scratch. You cant own concepts. Your argument is invalid.

Microsoft can now kill Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Minecraft is the only game out there that uses Java, but the Xbox 360, iOS and such versions do not use Java, so what I expect to see is the Java version gets dumped and work continues on the non-Java versions, which would benefit everyone.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[mark-t]

.... everyone, perhaps, except perhaps people who run it on a Mac, or almost certainly Linux will be left in the cold.

By "everyone", please admit to what you are really trying to say.... everyone who matters. Or more correctly, everyone that *YOU* think matters.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[SJHillman]

Last I knew, Microsoft was still the second largest developer of software for Mac (after Apple, of course). There's always hope in that direction *if* there's a market for it.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[readin]

Minecraft is the only game out there that uses Java, but the Xbox 360, iOS and such versions do not use Java, so what I expect to see is the Java version gets dumped and work continues on the non-Java versions, which would benefit everyone.

What about people who develop mods for the game? I would like to see modding made easier - a sale to Microsoft doesn't give me much hope.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly am hoping the community rallies behind one of the many clones out there.

Minecraft is an awesome idea terribly implemented. A properly implemented clone with such amazing features as multithreading (so you can run a decent sized server with a heavy mod load), error recovery, sane entity management, and an actual API for modding would probably do quite well right now as people will be looking to jump off the Microsoft driven wagon.

I honestly don't care if it's written in Java. Java isn't really the problem, especially on the server side. It just has to be well designed and implemented.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Dins]

I honestly am hoping the community rallies behind one of the many clones out there.

I've been playing 7 Days to Die with my son recently, and even though it's still in alpha, I can highly recommend it for those who like the survival aspect of Minecraft (i.e. night is coming, build your base before you die to hordes of zombies). The graphics are much improved over Minecraft and the crafting is more in-depth. Plus it has a great overall feel to it. Kind of feels like you're playing The Walking Dead when you're playing with others.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Charliemopps]

Minecraft is the only game out there that uses Java

What on earth are you talking about? Lots of games use Java.

Minecrafts sister game comes to mind: http://www.wurmonline.com/

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[tepples]

Minecraft is the only game out there that uses Java

You forgot DripStat. Hook up your Tomcat JVMs to the same company's APM service for an advantage in the game.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Anonymous Coward]

And would kill all the existing mods.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[UnknownSoldier]

That indeed could be the case. As pointed out on Reddit by gooneh ...

Minecraft is written in Java, and requires the Oracle (formerly Sun) JVM. Jokes and jabs aside, my guess is that MS wants to replace JVM with .NET under Minecraft, porting from Java to C#. All those 10-to-15 year olds playing Minecraft will be going to college and developing code in 5 or 10 years, and MS would naturally want them using their platform technology, so its a logical investment. Sadly, I would not be suprised to see support for Mac/Linux bit-rot and get dropped over a few years.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Ash-Fox]

And would kill all the existing mods.

I am okay with this.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[praxis]

Last I knew, Microsoft was still the second largest developer of software for Mac (after Apple, of course). There's always hope in that direction *if* there's a market for it.

Java runs on far more platforms than just Windows and OS X. If Microsoft ports Minecraft away from Java, what are they chances that they support those platforms?

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[RazorSharp]

Microsoft was still the second largest developer of software for Mac

I think that statements like this are funny. It's so ambiguous that it's meaningless without more specifics. Do you mean second largest company that develops software for Mac? The company that develops the second most amount of software for Mac? The company that has the second most amount of Mac developers? Or the company that makes the second most amount of money by selling Mac software?

It really puts into perspective how dependent Microsoft is on Office. If they dropped Office for Mac it would probably accelerate the death of Office and destroy one of the key pillars to their business. They don't develop Office for Mac because there's money to be made in that market, as your post implies. As a software company, they could be making software for iOS if that was how they operated. Office for Mac still exists because it's necessary to keep Office alive. It's the same reason that they didn't make Skype exclusive to Windows when they bought it--making Skype a Windows exclusive would kill it.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason why minecraft has become so big, is because of Java. Lets face it, the graphics are 10 years out of date, its slow, audio is shit.

However, because it was written in Java, it could be easily hacked to add mods. and the mods community are the ones that have turned minecraft from a game, into a platform, making Minecraft do things that amazed even the original developers. The day it becomes locked down, and people are no longer able to tinker, is the day it will die.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[UnknownSoldier]

Another gem from betelgeux

You want to see the future of Minecraft all you need to do is look at Flight Simulator.
They had a solid community building planes and terrain and with every release the graphics and flight engine got better. There was some payware but 95% was free.
In Jan 2009, citing financial pressure, the last of the design team for Flight Sim was laid off and the tasks for ongoing development were distributed throughout the rest of the company.
In Feb 2012 Microsoft Flight was released as a free to play game. All previous aircraft, terrain, instruments from previous versions were incompatible. Only a single island of Hawaii and a single aircraft was available. The flight model was simplified to make it easier on the console players. Additional areas to fly in as well as aircraft were available for purchase. Reviews from longterm sim users were unkind to say the least. It was now an arcade game - it simulated nothing and was useless as a learning tool. It was nothing the community wanted or needed.
July 2012 the game was cancelled.
Aug 2013 the XBox.com closure ended the ability to get a new copy of game.
There has been no Flight Sim available from MS since 2012. 2006 was the last actual Sim release honestly. It had been on the market since 1979.
I want to be wrong about this, but MS has a history of not understanding and not listening to it's customers.
The start button that they spent 17 years getting customers used to was removed and they are still don't seem to understand why Win8 isn't the huge success they hoped it would be. In spite of the fact that they have been told time and again that this is a major issue for many users they steadfastly refuse to correct it - promising that it might be there in the next update.
MS knows better than it's users apparently and it will do what it wants like the 800lbs gorilla they are.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[sproketboy]

Only one? Really? You've been living under a rock it seems.

https://www.google.com/?q=java...

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Redmancometh]

As long as they dont kill forge with heavier obfuscation it should be okay.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Em Adespoton]

Remember when Microsoft bought Bungie?

Bungie was a developer for the Mac platform that brought us many excellent games, such as Marathon and Myth in the 90's. It was working on a game called Halo, that was supposed to leverage all the Mac features to create a hugely amazing game.

In 2000, Microsoft bought Bungie, and the delivery date for Halo slipped. Turned out that the reason for the slip was that all dev work on the Mac version halted, and MS put all Bungie's efforts into porting it to XBOX. It then came out as an XBOX exclusive title (the launch title).

Eventually, Bungie left MS in 2007, but had to leave the Halo franchise behind.

This is pretty much what I expect to happen 14 years later with Minecraft, with the exception that Minecraft already exists (like Myth II did at the time of the Bungie buyout) and so isn't likely to be the killer app at the center of the deal.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck...

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Halo for the Mac was eventually released, but it wasn't the game that Halo was intended to be before MS bought them; the Mac version was a port of the PC version which was itself a port of the X-Box version, which was substiantially different from the Halo previewed for the Mac in 1999.

Losing Bungie to the grey sameness was a bad thing. Hopefully MS has progressed, but I'm not counting on it (I play Minecraft on a Mac).

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[pspahn]

The only reason? That's it? You're saying the success had nothing to do with the original $10 price tag that guaranteed future updates? I think without that early infusion of cash, there wouldn't be any additional resources to develop for other platforms.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if Microsoft goes this route, I seriously doubt the game would be terribly hard to get running with Wine unless they really tried to make it not work.

Wine of 2014 is certainly not nearly the useless pile of crap it was in 2000 when I started out playing around with it, and many new games run with little to no tweaking required (with more still running fine as long as you apply a patch or change a registry entry).

In any case, Microsoft should tread lightly if they're considering this course of action, because walking all over the mods that keep people coming back (vanilla Minecraft is fun for a little while...the mods are what keep a good chunk of people coming back even after years of play) would be about as foolish in this arena as the Modern UI was in their OS arena.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[mark-t]

I'll probably get interested in using Wine again when the people who maintain the slackbuild for it are interested in supporting it for 64-bit Linux.

That and the fact that ever even thinking of having to use something like Wine to run Minecraft on Linux fails on so many different levels that I have no words for it.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Em Adespoton]

Yeah; I didn't add that bit to my post as it didn't really add anything to the discussion and would have confused some people -> TL;DR.

But yeah; I see MS doing something similar with ANY game they buy; Xbox platform first, then Windows, then everyone else, by which point the game isn't what it was originally intended to be.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey - this is Microsoft we are talking about...
Their actions can be predicted by looking at their history..

So - better prepare youself for an absolute wine-incompatible Windows 8 extended version as soon as possible..

After that an shiny high-polished Minecraft 2 exclusive Xbox version, and an halt on supporting the "obsolete" old Minecraft...

Mark my words, mark my words...

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[UnknownSoldier]

> sane entity management

Care to explain more please?

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Cederic]

I'm not sure whether to be appalled, impressed, distressed or just take part.

I'll settle for joining you: what the fuck...

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Bing Tsher E]

Having a few satellite operations like their Skype business unit developing widely cross platform products like Skype is more valuable than one would think. It allows Microsoft to keep a toe immersed in a lot of their competitors' platforms. That's valuable wether or not there's even any profit in providing Skype on those platforms.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Anonymous Coward]

> Java runs on far more platforms than just Windows and OS X. If Microsoft ports Minecraft away from Java, what are they chances that they support those platforms?

Depends on what you mean by "run". Does it mean "runs well"? "Runs fast"? "Runs, but only on one very specific version of Java?" It's not the 1990s any more. Java's cross-platform capabilities are not the advantage they used to be.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the reason Minecraft is associated with Java is because of its less-than-stellar performance. If there's a sharp game that runs well, no one will notice if it's written in Java, C++ or APL.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[praxis]

> Java runs on far more platforms than just Windows and OS X. If Microsoft ports Minecraft away from Java, what are they chances that they support those platforms?

Depends on what you mean by "run". Does it mean "runs well"? "Runs fast"? "Runs, but only on one very specific version of Java?" It's not the 1990s any more. Java's cross-platform capabilities are not the advantage they used to be.

I mean runs sufficiently to play Minecraft. It does so on many distributions of Linux out-of-the-box. That's more than just Windows and OS X. Java runs to other degrees on other platforms as well, but for the topic at hand (Minecraft's future), Linux distributions are what I'm referring to here.

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java

[Whorhay]

Honestly the graphics being "outdated" was a feature for many players. It meant more of a focus on the actual gaming elements than window dressing. Besides which there were mods very early on that improved the graphics and lighting.

Minecraft is also the first game I knew of that literally evoked a sandbox feel. Games before it were described as "sandbox" but that really just meant you had a wide amount of freedom in the game. Minecraft actually allowed building and destruction on a scale which no other game had done before, at least not that people had heard of. Of course it was inspired by Infiniminer and Dwarf Fortress but those are very niche unknown games by most any comparison.

Also so far as the pricing goes, I remember that when I bought my copy it was closer to $13 because of the exchange rates. Regardless when the transaction servers melted down under the load after Penny Arcade talked about it, Notch made the current version available for free until the transaction servers were back up and a new version was ready weeks later. In my opinion that was some amazing good will, or very shrewd business sense, at a critical moment of growth.

Will continue to be developed for other platforms

[Sockatume]

According to Mojang, Microsoft has agreed not to meddle in the development of the game for other platforms, although they point out that they can't do anything about any objections platformholders might have about distributing a Microsoft game.

I see what you did there!

[Anonymous Coward]

which has notched about 50 million copies

Well done.

Microsoft owns GPL software

[Anonymous Coward]

So Microsoft owns Mojang which owns the Bukkit mod and employs some of its principal developers, which release the mod as GPL software. I knew Microsoft would come around to Open Source eventually...

Re:Microsoft owns GPL software

[Guspaz]

I think that ship sailed when Microsoft started contributing code to the Linux kernel, although they had released lots of code under OSI-approved licenses way before that.

Re:Microsoft owns GPL software

[tepples]

At this point, I feel it my Aspie duty to remind people of Microsoft's attempt to dip its toes in the free software pool with the Microsoft Public License and Microsoft Reciprocal License.

Re:Microsoft owns GPL software

[Anonymous Coward]

Mojang does NOT own Bukkit, it owns the name Bukkit, the repository the Bukkit code is in and pays some people to continue working on Bukkit, but the code is not owned by Mojang in any way.

Dupe?

[PincushionMan]

Haven't we seen this story before?
Okay, I see now, maybe because the full amount has been publicized. I'm just a little curious why so many Minecraft stories have been bubbling to the front page recently.

And jawtheshark: 'notched' - Really? That is quite punishing. Was that you or the editors?

Re:Dupe?

[Sockatume]

1) One story was the juicy rumour. The other was the confirmation of the juicy rumour. It's not like it's the first time this has happened on Slashdot, or any other tech news site.
2) Two stores is not "so many Minecraft stories"

Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[Apharmd]

what else does Mojang have to offer? Because I'm not seeing $2.5b worth of stuff in the pipe from them. Also, what does this mean for the future of Minecraft on non-MS platforms? Overall, this is pretty bad news for gamers.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[Sockatume]

Moichandising, moichandising. Minecraft the game isn't worth $2.5 Bn but I suspect that the Minecraft licencing business will probably add up to that much in the long run.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[Chris Mattern]

Minecraft: The Flamethrower! The kids love that one.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[jellomizer]

I have to agree 2.5 billion for a game title is over the top. Especially as most game titles do not have a long life. Sure it is popular now... However in 5 years? 10 years?
Nintendo got lucky with a few franchisees.
Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon. But these are charactors/story universes. Mindcraft doesn't have such an in-depth story it is just the game fad of the time.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[Pontiac]

Watch for

Minecraft: The movie..
Minecraft: The cartoon series

Lets face it. Minecrat merch can be found everywhere for kids, teens and adults.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[Anrego]

I think the mod community is a big part of what is keeping the game popular right now. Most people burn out on vanilla minecraft after a few years, but there is a huge pile of mods that keep the game playable.

Once Microsoft kills off that community (I don't know how, but I'm sure they will), I suspect minecraft will indeed atrophy and die.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[Apharmd]

How long is your "long run"? 5 years? 10? I know Minecraft has had some pretty serious legs on the NPD sales charts, but will MC merchandise be relevant for long enough to recoup that investment? It just seems to me like Microsoft is getting on board late in the game, and that they overpaid.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[ZombieBraintrust]

Mario and Zelda did not have stories when they came out. They had a vague goal to rescue a princess and a paragraph or two in manual that kids didn't read. The Pokemon universe only exists becuase of the card game, anime, and manga.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[synapse7]

Seems like a good business decision for Microsoft. If your tablet, phone, console and computer industries are tanking.. sell stuff toys!!

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[CastrTroy]

Apparently there already is a Minecraft Movie in the works. I'm not sure if a Minecraft Cartoon series (or the movie for that matter) could compete with the many people that churn out thousands of videos of Minecraft on Youtube.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[CastrTroy]

Or they could make the modding community better. It they created a market place for people to sell/give away their mods and give users a supported way of installing those mods, then that would be a big step in the right direction. Currently installing mods is a big pain. Even installing Forge means going through ad-hell.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out Minecraft Realms (https://minecraft.net/realms). I think there's a good chance MSFT can transition Minecraft into one of the world's largest MMOs.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[datavirtue]

In ten years there are going to be a raft of Minecraft nostalgia sites.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[lucifig]

I've probably bought half a billion dollars worth of Minecraft shirts and toys and junk for my child myself.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[Anrego]

Mojang had been promising a proper mod API forever, somehow I doubt Microsoft will deliver.

On the vaguely plus side, if Microsoft lets Minecraft atrophy, at least modders won't be going after a moving target and we might finally get some stability.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[BradleyUffner]

This isn't about making money directly from the game or even its IP. This is about Microsoft having a T1 line directly in to kid's brains. Kids eat, sleep, and breathe Minecraft, Microsoft just bought the mind-share of an entire generation.

Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but

[Whorhay]

This is definitely true for some people but not so much for others. I've been playing for years on and off and the only mods I've ever installed where things like optifine to enable higher quality textures. I also have a number of nephews who only started playing in the last year or two, and one of my own kids wants to play it. The nephews saw me playing it while visiting, were enthralled, and eventually pestered their respective parents into getting it for them. I really don't see the market for this kind of game going away. If somone comes along and does it better somehow in a way that matters for children it might get pushed aside.

There are plenty of games that do individual components of Minecraft better, but none of them put it all together into a game that appeals to the same set of people. Landmark has the beautiful world and remarkable tools for altering it, but it is also far more complex than most six year olds could manage to use. Terraria has a much better combat and progression system, but it is a side scroller and so lacks the allure of a 3d world. I'm sure we can come up with plenty of other examples.

The bottom line is that Minecraft is pretty enough, simple enough, and cheap enough that it appeals to a huge range of age groups. But critically it works for little kids, which means that every day their are new customers being born. Market saturation just isn't likely to really happen in the near term.

Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Should I be scared of defragmenting blocks now?

hope for improvements

[neghvar1]

My hope here is that the game is developed to go beyond java rendering. Even with a Core i7, the game hogs about 70% of the CPU and about 3.2GB of memory. On average. Utilize the GPU, Direct X, OpenGL. Something to make resource handling more efficient.

Re:hope for improvements

[sirber]

Java isn't a renderer. The game uses OpenGL.

Re:hope for improvements

[jawtheshark]

Really? I run it on an AMD A8-3850 on Ubuntu 14.04 and I didn't have the impression it's strained at all. Granted, I don't run the server part on that machine. My CPU is severely outclassed by most i7s.

Sure, it's not the most efficient codebase, but on a modern machine with power to spare, it's rather fine. Now, I have run it on a rather high end Core2Duo. That's less fun.

Re:hope for improvements

[CastrTroy]

This. The XBox 360, Android, iOS, and Raspberry Pi versions all play quite well.There's no reason why a reasonable computer shouldn't be able to run this game. Yet any computer that isn't a "gaming" computer with a dedicated video card struggles with this game. They need to drop Java or figure out a way to compile Java to actual machine code so the game runs well. If they can make it so that it can run on any old computer (which by the graphics level it should be), They'll be able to sell a lot more copies. As it is, there is only 1 copy in my house because we only have 1 computer that can run it well enough. If all the computers in my house could run it well enough, we would have 4 copies so we could all play multiplayer together.

Re:hope for improvements

[nine-times]

That's just all the high-quality textures and high polygon count for each model.

Re:hope for improvements

[Tyr07]

You're obviously modding the game.

Default minecraft vanilla installations with default graphics pack eats like 800 MB of ram.
Cpu is not used that much.

Now, the mod pack I put together, uses 2.3GB of ram for the client and a lot more CPU.
Mods aren't designed for performance, more for compatibility, which means they drastically increase resource requirements.
If they were developed by a single team and placed directly into the game, you would see a significant performance boost for those 'mods'

Re:hope for improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

It runs great w/ a video card. A post higher up says it uses OpenGL. You complain that if you don't have a dedicated video card it runs poorly - and then as a solution recommend it not use Java?
Gee I'd love to play Battlefield but I really wish it had a good software renderer - Things nobody says.

Re:hope for improvements

[Xest]

"They need to drop Java or figure out a way to compile Java to actual machine code so the game runs well."

Yeah, why has no one thought of this?

You realise the way modern Java (since like 1999) works is that you write an application in Java, that Java code gets compiled to Java bytecode, which you can think of as a cross platform version of assembly, and then that Java Virtual Machine on which you run that bytecode (i.e. the compiled Java application) does in fact convert it into actual machine code right? Not just machine code, but machine code optimised for the exact machine the JVM is executing on? This allows the JVM to reach C++ levels of performance and some cases go beyond, because C++ is generally only compiled for a specific architecture, whilst the JVM optimises for a specific machine.

This does mean slow first time execution of modules as each module is optimised to that executing machine's native machine code the first time it is used, but after that first execution of the program or library you're basically getting native performance.

For what it's worth though, the console version of Minecraft (360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One) is apparently written in C++ because some of those platforms - i.e. the Xbox - don't have a Java Virtual Machine on which the Java version could be executed on.

I have a relatively low end laptop, it cost like £300 a year ago, and it runs Minecraft absolutely fine. What spec are your machines if they can't even run Minecraft?

Re:hope for improvements

[Richy_T]

Yep, OpenGL. Minecraft needs some horsepower to run because it's rendering millions of blocks, long distance viewing is important to the game and because it's so flexible, there's a lot of optimization tricks that simply can't be done. The actual game engine part is fairly trivial and doesn't really suffer from being in Java at all (and believe me, I'm no Java fanboy).

Re:hope for improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is also slow because it's so verbose and indirect it's hard to compile to efficient machine code. It's also IO bound through the chockpoints in the VM to get to the real hardware.

Re:hope for improvements

[neghvar1]

true, I run various FTB mods. Have not played vanilla in quite a while.

Re:hope for improvements

[CastrTroy]

Maybe they just need to optimize things better then. There's no reason to draw millions of blocks if there is no way for me see millions of blocks on my screen. You can tell there's issues when it slowly draw stuff. It starts drawing caverns 50 blocks deep before it draws the stuff that's right in front of your face. They shouldn't be rendering stuff that you can't even see.

Re:hope for improvements

[Richy_T]

Yes. Though I believe that has something to do with the way it loads chunks. It may not actually know at that point that those caverns are *not* in front of your face and the fact that you can see the caverns implies that it *has* attempted to not display blocks that you wouldn't be able to see (otherwise you would see the flat face of the chunk the cavern was in instead).

But yes, it is perfectly possible to have millions of blocks in your field of view even when things are behaving as they should and all hidden blocks are being correctly removed from the rendering.

Re:hope for improvements

[Ash-Fox]

They need to drop Java

No, they need to write decent code instead. The way the engine is implemented is poor and wouldn't matter what language was used.

Yet any computer that isn't a "gaming" computer with a dedicated video card struggles with this game.

Minecraft without mods performs like doodoo (15fps) on my gaming system (core i7, 780TI, 24GiB RAM etc). I get far better FPS in Star Citizen (60 - adaptive v-sync).

Re:hope for improvements

[Ash-Fox]

Note: I am not the grand parent.

I have a relatively low end laptop, it cost like ã300 a year ago, and it runs Minecraft absolutely fine. What spec are your machines if they can't even run Minecraft?

I get 15FPS on my system for Minecraft with no mods. My system has a Core i7, 780TI, 24GiB RAM. I get 60fps on Star Citizen (adaptive v-sync is limiting it to 60).

Re:hope for improvements

[Megane]

The game abuses OpenGL.

The current version of the game will not run on OS X older than 10.9 because they now use some advanced features of OpenGL that will lock up the graphics card on older versions of OS X. Their official workaround is "upgrade to 10.9".

Re:hope for improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

With my i7, the game "hogs" one core, which is 13% (actually 12.5%) of a quad-core, hyperthreading-capable CPU. I have it capped at 4GB of memory, which isn't really a problem when nothing uses even half of the 16GB I have installed in the box. And that includes Visual Studio and SQL Server. (Yes, SQL Server would eventually take every last shred of available memory if I were actually using it as a server, but that's a different issue.)

Minecraft has had an "Advanced OpenGL" mode for years. It's always one of the first settings I turn on, since it generally improves framerate and chunk-loading performance by a huge amount. (I've always assumed the chunk-loading boost comes from offloading to the GPU freeing up CPU resources to do that task instead.) DirectX wouldn't make much difference, with all other things being equal.

My one huge gripe about Minecraft's performance has always been "why didn't they just use UE3?" Even UE2 would've been able to handle about 99% of what's needed. It basically comes down to combinations of smeshes (you need about a dozen of them for: cube, stair, slab, fence/wall, door, trapdoor, gate, etc.), materials (UE2 had a nice materials system with custom properties), and scripted actors (dynamic meshes for mobs or scripted smeshes for things like falling sand). It would likely need a bit of AI help, but then again, so did MC. UE3 added map-stitching, which probably could be co-opted and extended for procedural generation (dynamic map generation with one giant subtractive brush, followed by a crap-ton of smesh population with various material rules). That would've been the last necessary piece. And then you get better performance, better lighting, better physics simulation, and modding support built in. Oh, and porting it to other platforms would be much simpler.

But I know why Notch didn't use UE3. NIH. He wanted to have the fun of making his own game engine. It was never about the game. With Notch, it never seems to be about the game. It's about his enjoyment of his craft. It's just that this time, it outgrew his personal ambitions, and now there's a whole community that paid for his game and disagrees with his need to do fun programming. Notch is wise to take the $2.5B and run. He didn't want a job as a game developer anyway. He just wanted to play around and occasionally release a game that he doesn't have to support. Don't we all?

Re:hope for improvements

[Darktan]

Hmm. I get 15 FPS on my mother in law's old laptop. Core 2, 2GB RAM, some shitty mobile Nvidia thing. Granted, that is with reduced settings, but I get get ~90FPS at full settings with my desktop machine that is still much less than yours. Perhaps you have a video driver problem?

Re:hope for improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

You're talking out your ass.

1. Java is faster than C/C++?! Citation fucking needed. Any time Java meets or exceeds C/C++ for speed is probably because the library that the Java program is leveraging is an extremely optimized, pre-compiled, native binary... probably written in C/C++.
2. JIT compilation doesn't magically transform inherently slow semantics into super-fast-omg-native-speeds. Guess what? New'ing up a bunch of objects, destroying them, checking the bounds on every array, boxing and unboxing, pausing everything to run a garbage collect, using linked lists instead of arrays, and other similar abuses of memory and cache are fucking slow. Guess what Java does a lot of? You can pull the same stupidity in C or C++, but at least there's the option not to.
3. "Well just write your Java program with memory stuff in mind." So... write it like C++ and STILL pay the penalty of the GC kicking in at random times and trashing your frame rate? No thanks. There's a reason engines like Unreal, Crytek, and id's are all written in C++: they write their own stuff to handle memory in an efficient fashion instead of a random stop-everything-while-I-clean-this-mess-up GC.
4. Why pay the penalty of waiting while the JIT converts stuff to optimized machine code? Why not START with optimized machine code?

Obligatory benchmarksgame link: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=gpp&lang2=java&data=u64q

Re:hope for improvements

[datavirtue]

Full screen?

Re:hope for improvements

[forsted]

I get 30+ FPS on a Core 2, 8GB ram, a years old Nvidia card, and running Debian Linux.

Re:hope for improvements

[Ash-Fox]

I get a solid 60fps in Star Citizen, Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: Ghosts all at maximum graphic settings among others. I am using adaptive v-sync to limit the FPS to the screen refresh rate to prevent tearing, but this makes no difference with Minecraft.

Re:hope for improvements

[Ash-Fox]

Full screen?

Indeed.

Re:hope for improvements

[Kremmy]

They've been struggling with that one for an awful long time. Even to this day, using the OptiFine mod can give a huge performance increase on many machines just because it's doing things a little smarter with it.

Re:hope for improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's actually locking up the GPU, that's a bug on Apple's side.

Re:hope for improvements

[Mal-2]

I get 30+ fps on an E350 machine with the integrated AMD GPU, 8 GB of RAM. I get upwards of 120 fps and turn on the limiter on my 6-core Phenom II, with a GeForce 9500.

The exception is when I'm near a farm. All those animals really slow down the game. Anything over about 200 nearby mobs seems to have a significant impact, though the degradation is gradual on the big machine and more like a cliff on the E350.

Re:hope for improvements

[friesofdoom]

Then why does Android need a quad core phone to run when windows 95 ran on a 100mghz single core Pentium and did much MUCH more? ComSci grads keep telling me how fast Java is, how it can even be faster than C++, then in about 3 years time after some real world experience when I speak to them again, they usually cant remember telling me such "Ridiculous BS" The idea that Java can exceed C++'s performance in a realistic test environment, or in fact comes anywhere near it, is pure fantasy in my experience. Stop spreading this nonsense.

Re:hope for improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

Java reaching better performance than C++. I don't know what you are smoking, but please, pass me a carload, a rail car that is....

Re:hope for improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Install Optifine
2. In the in-game options, set the framerate to "unlimited" (force vsync in your gpu control panel if you want it).

That should help considerably. With Optifine I can play the game fullscreen at a smooth 60 fps with the render distance cranked all the way up, without it performance goes to shit if I bring it above 12. And my rig is not as beefy as yours.

Re:hope for improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

They shouldn't be rendering stuff that you can't even see.

Um, they don't.

Re:hope for improvements

[jones_supa]

which isn't really a problem when nothing uses even half of the 16GB I have installed in the box. And that includes Visual Studio and SQL Server.

Not that surprising when Visual Studio typically uses only 100MB. :)

Re:hope for improvements

[Xest]

Odd, it runs fine for me (30fps - 60fps) on a 2.4ghz i3 laptop with 4gb RAM and some laptop based GeForce. I suspect there's something strange going on with drivers if people are having such problems.

Re:hope for improvements

[Xest]

Okay, let's make one thing clear - I am not saying that Java programs are always faster than C++ programs or any such thing. I am saying, correctly, that there are technical reasons why there are circumstances in which Java can outperform C++. Over the course of a large complex program these benefits will almost always be outweighed by the disadvantages. I'll address your points one by one:

1. "1. Java is faster than C/C++?! Citation fucking needed. Any time Java meets or exceeds C/C++ for speed is probably because the library that the Java program is leveraging is an extremely optimized, pre-compiled, native binary... probably written in C/C++."

Incorrect. When Java is faster than C++ it's because it compiles with more context than a C++ application does when it is compiled. This allows for things like better virtual function inlining and subsequently things like better loop vectorisation. Again, this has to be taken in context, this does not mean that these optimisations that Java can make but C++ can not always make Java faster, that's absolutely false, but in practice it does mean that contrary to the common myth that Java performance is abysmal that performance has in the last decade rapidly approached (and again, in specific circumstances, surpassed) C++ performance.

2. "2. JIT compilation doesn't magically transform inherently slow semantics into super-fast-omg-native-speeds. Guess what? New'ing up a bunch of objects, destroying them, checking the bounds on every array, boxing and unboxing, pausing everything to run a garbage collect, using linked lists instead of arrays, and other similar abuses of memory and cache are fucking slow. Guess what Java does a lot of? You can pull the same stupidity in C or C++, but at least there's the option not to."

You are partly right here, and partly wrong. Some of the issues you cite are reasons why, in practice, large Java applications rarely perform as well as C++ counterparts, but you are also partly wrong - a number of the things you cite are either not issues, or are regularly optimised away by the compiler in practice. The garbage collector is indeed an issue that is the bane of obtaining deterministic performance with Java, but it's not a beast that is impossible to tame, which is why Java has had many successful applications to HPC tasks.

"3. "Well just write your Java program with memory stuff in mind." So... write it like C++ and STILL pay the penalty of the GC kicking in at random times and trashing your frame rate? No thanks. There's a reason engines like Unreal, Crytek, and id's are all written in C++: they write their own stuff to handle memory in an efficient fashion instead of a random stop-everything-while-I-clean-this-mess-up GC."

Sure, and there's a reason indies are almost entirely using JIT'd languages like Java and C# through tools and frameworks such as Unity and MonoGame - because when you're not going AAA then these types of frameworks perform perfectly well for gaming as proven by so many brilliant indie games in recent years. I absolutely agree that if you're making the latest and greatest cutting edge 3D engine that is going to blow away people with it's visuals that you'll still want to do it in C++, but let's be clear - this isn't most game development, far and away most game development in recent years is being done with managed languages - even on mobile there is a massive slant towards things like Unity. Even big studios like Blizzard are using it sometimes for games like Hearthstone.

"4. Why pay the penalty of waiting while the JIT converts stuff to optimized machine code? Why not START with optimized machine code?"

Because there is an absolutely massive development overhead in doing so.

There are a lot of folk stuck in the past, believing that C++ is still the god language, the be all and end all that should be used for everything, just as there is an even smaller subset of folk who see those C++ zealots even as heathens and believe everything ever should be written in C, and I'm sure it

Re:hope for improvements

[Ash-Fox]

Odd, it runs fine for me (30fps - 60fps) on a 2.4ghz i3 laptop with 4gb RAM and some laptop based GeForce.

Are you running it full screen at your maximum screen resolution with the highest graphical settings (since you know, I can do that with BF3, BF4, Star Citizen etc. Minecraft is nowhere nearly as graphically intensive)?

I suspect there's something strange going on with drivers if people are having such problems.

I'm pretty certain it's the game, not the drivers. It's the same regardless if it's on Linux or Windows.

Re:hope for improvements

[Xest]

Here, I explained it to this guy, maybe you'll learn something:

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:hope for improvements

[Xest]

"Are you running it full screen at your maximum screen resolution with the highest graphical settings "

Yes absolutely, I think the laptop resolution is only 1366 x 768, but given the lower specs it shouldn't result in such a disparity. The laptop does struggle a little with Diablo 3 unless you turn the settings down a bit but certainly have never had any problems with Minecraft (it's actually the laptop my girlfriend uses to play - the system I play on is a 2.83ghz quad core with 8gb of RAM from 2008 with just the graphics card updated to a 650ti a year or two back and that easily gets 60fps at max settings on Minecraft and close enough on Diablo 3 too for reference).

"I'm pretty certain it's the game, not the drivers. It's the same regardless if it's on Linux or Windows."

Would it not be a universal issue if it was the game? This is genuinely the first I've heard of glaring Minecraft performance issues and I know of many people who run it at 60fps or more on far lower spec systems than you're running. I was going to suggest that maybe there's a problem with your Java install, but if it's effecting Linux and Windows equally that that seems unlikely (but not impossible of course) too. There must be something that Minecraft or Java/JNI doesn't like about your specific hardware configuration, but I really couldn't guess what.

Re:hope for improvements

[Ash-Fox]

Would it not be a universal issue if it was the game?

Indeed, and no other application or game on my system is like this. I can play BF4 at maximum settings at 60fps, same with Star Citizen etc.

Of course, what you're trying to say is that other people should be experiencing this.

This is genuinely the first I've heard of glaring Minecraft performance issues and I know of many people who run it at 60fps or more on far lower spec systems than you're running.

This is no doubt in my mind because people who struggle with this just give up on the game and don't bother. So they aren't participating in your community. I have only met two other people who had this issue too, but considering that I only know 12 people who have tried/played/play Minecraft, that's not really unsurprising. I do know that the issue is definitely exasperated when bumping up quality settings and fullscreen.

There must be something that Minecraft or Java/JNI doesn't like about your specific hardware configuration, but I really couldn't guess what.

I honestly think the game was written poorly. I remember a time when overflows (corrupts your map because you went too far) could happen because you went too far and it was because Notch did not use a feature of Java that used to be advertised as a big reason to use Java... Bignums. Then instead of actually fixing it with bignums, he just hard codes a barrier. Instead of using literals to represent all the data in a grid, he chose to create some of the most inefficient way to store that data and we end up with servers that require 12GB for a modest Minecraft server setup. He could have created zoning with bignums, which would have allowed only the relevant portions at the time to be loaded into memory.

I am convinced based off what I have observed from decompiled Minecraft classes and the solutions that were chosen to solve problems that the issues I am experiencing are from a poorly designed and poorly implemented engine that causing some issues with my system.

Re:hope for improvements

[sirber]

The game abuses OpenGL.

The current version of the game will not run on OS X older than 10.9 because they now use some advanced features of OpenGL that will lock up the graphics card on older versions of OS X. Their official workaround is "upgrade to 10.9".

They upgraded to OpenGL 2.1, which is available since 2006. Previously they were using OpenGL 1.1.

Re:hope for improvements

[Megane]

They "upgraded" something that was working perfectly fine, without even a configuration option to go back to the old rendering?

Re:hope for improvements

[Megane]

If it was working perfectly fine until they changed it with no option to use the old rendering, I would consider that a bug on their side. The GPU being able to be locked up is indeed a problem, but one that that I am surprised hadn't been a problem before, like when 10.6.x was new. In researching what the hell was happening, I found that the usual fix for other OSes is to keep one reserved thread (or whatever they're called) running on the GPU that allows it to be reset in case it gets totally fucked up.

from Notch

[Dave Whiteside]

http://pastebin.com/n1qTeikM
to quote :-
I'm leaving Mojang

I don’t see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world. Minecraft certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it’s changed games. I never meant for it to do either. It’s certainly flattering, and to gradually get thrust into some kind of public spotlight is interesting.

A relatively long time ago, I decided to step down from Minecraft development. Jens was the perfect person to take over leading it, and I wanted to try to do new things. At first, I failed by trying to make something big again, but since I decided to just stick to small prototypes and interesting challenges, I’ve had so much fun with work. I wasn’t exactly sure how I fit into Mojang where people did actual work, but since people said I was important for the culture, I stayed.

I was at home with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago when the internet exploded with hate against me over some kind of EULA situation that I had nothing to do with. I was confused. I didn’t understand. I tweeted this in frustration. Later on, I watched the This is Phil Fish video on YouTube and started to realize I didn’t have the connection to my fans I thought I had. I’ve become a symbol. I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.

As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.

Considering the public image of me already is a bit skewed, I don’t expect to get away from negative comments by doing this, but at least now I won’t feel a responsibility to read them.

I’m aware this goes against a lot of what I’ve said in public. I have no good response to that. I’m also aware a lot of you were using me as a symbol of some perceived struggle. I’m not. I’m a person, and I’m right there struggling with you.

I love you. All of you. Thank you for turning Minecraft into what it has become, but there are too many of you, and I can’t be responsible for something this big. In one sense, it belongs to Microsoft now. In a much bigger sense, it’s belonged to all of you for a long time, and that will never change.

It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

It’s about my sanity.

$2.5 Billion would do a lot for my sanity, too.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

"It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity."

Yea, but for $2.5 billion dollars you can buy a lot of sanity. Or a small country.

Re:from Notch

[Neo-Rio-101]

Such as making you a target for kidnappers?

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of nonsense.
Also,

If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.M

Kinda like 0x10c. "wahh people like my game, IN TO THE BIN". Even though he had a stable framework set down to fund the game before it was even visually shown off, he had every intention of this game going somewhere, except his laziness and willingness to commit to projects got in the way and he went on a vacation instead.
I called this the instant these rumors started.

There is no reason you can't have fun making games and making money from it.
He had plenty of fun making the game back in the days on /v/, updates coming out pretty much every week.
There were more updates back then than there was in the 1.8 update there.
Then suddenly, few interviews, possible Steam page, the game exploded.
Then even after company was created, nothing, nothing for almost a year.
Why are you so BROKEN Notch? What is actually wrong with you? Why don't you want to be PAID to have fun?
Being paid isn't a bad thing. Being paid to do something you love isn't a bad thing. Even bad work doesn't need to be boring and unfun.

Also, so many people are going to be pissed that this happened. So many people were expecting this game to go fully open source when it became old and stale and they couldn't be bothered updating it more. It was somewhere on the site before the game exploded in sales, then things changed dramatically.

In the end, it will probably be a good thing. Maybe updates might actually happen frequently again, and maybe the mod API might actually get finished instead of this command-block crap! FUCK.
I just hope Microsoft don't shove ads and DLCrap down peoples throats to try make as much money off this as possible.
One really good idea they could do is create an online marketplace with a mature mod API and let people upload mods, and even sell mods. Mods that can be sold get a larger storage space online as well. And the actual intention of the mod API, the one that will let you completely change the way the game works like was planned for the resource packs that are currently there now. (so far one of the major things I have seen use it is Captive Minecraft in the 3rd map, custom sounds, textures and such)
If Microsoft kills this, they will have hell to pay for the shareholders. They just killed off a potential huge income, and spent $2 and a half billion doing so.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I'm sure the money had nothing to do with it.
Give me be break.
Dude got a offered 2+ billion and decided to take it along with a few more fukitol pills. I don't blame him.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the guy, seems understandable.
But what baffles me knowing his sell argument: Microsoft should not have offered that much gold... *giggle* it seems Notch played this rather well, to understate it slightly.

Note to self: if i ever bump my head on the toilet sink and subsequently intend to engineer a flux-capacitor, give Notch a call.

Re:from Notch

[mark-t]

At least the guy is being honest about where he's at.... he doesn't want to deal with the hassles of being responsible for a product that is this big. Even if that makes him a lazy ass, who the fuck cares? He's at least had the balls to say he's retiring with what he's made so far instead of trying to coast under the illusion of still being in charge of development, while not actually delivering any real product... and given his position, you know that he probably wouldn't even get fired for it.... or at least not for quite a long time, and it would only drag the company down and hurt everybody.

After you have a certain amount of money, having even more just means more responsibility, and it's entirely okay for somebody to actively make a choice to not want to be a part of that.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.

Sorry Noch, you have become the supreme God, the enabler of the creation of all things between the Heaven and the Earth. Don't take any pressures from being higher than Odin.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

If I hit the lottery I'd walk away from my job too.
 
And not to say he doesn't love what he does, I believe every word of what he says. I just couldn't imagine being under the thumbs of others when there is a world of possibilities out there. Even if I left my job I'd still be productive but I'd do it on my own terms.

Re:from Notch

[mwvdlee]

The money enables him to make a choice a lot of us would like to make but can't.
He's making a choice to not try to earn any more money, but to only do fun projects.
In that respect it is indeed not about the money, but rather thanks to the money he's already got.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even see him as being lazy.

He doesn't want to be responsible for people. I don't blame him.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a blessing really. Could you imagine a billionaire Molynuax (sp? too lazy) or Romero? Even as funny as that would be, just having them back in the news again and again would be tiring.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I'm sure the money had nothing to do with it.
Give me be break.
Dude got a offered 2+ billion and decided to take it along with a few more fukitol pills. I don't blame him.

He was already set for life. The 2+ billions is a nice perk, but honestly I don't see him buying anything for it that he couldn't already afford.
I mean, yes, he can get an expensive car and a boat and whatever, but he doesn't seem to be the kind of guy that enjoys that stuff.
Playing TF2, watching twitch streams and writing barely functional code are quite inexpensive hobbies. Even donating $10,000 to a twitch stream every now and then won't really dig into the kind of money he already had.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

"I’m right there struggling with you."

Annnnnd no.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

He just has to build a decoy from the right blocks.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

He's getting more money than I'll ever seen in a thousand lifetimes. Lazy, wreckles, asshole. Who gives a shit, the man won the game of life.

Re:from Notch

[CastrTroy]

Especially with this amount of money. It's one thing to walk away from your job for a million dollars (typical lottery), it's another thing to walk away from you job for a billion dollars. $1 billion is enough that you would never have to worry about money ever, no matter how much money you spent. You could just travel (first class) and live in hotels (five star) and get limousines to driver you everywhere and you still wouldn't run out of money in your entire lifetime. You could do exactly what you wanted, where you wanted, when you wanted to do it.

Re:from Notch

[pspahn]

Being paid to do something you love isn't a bad thing.

Also, not necessarily a good thing, either. You need to be very careful doing what you love for a living. The stresses of work, life, etc can make it much less fun. This results in you doing something you don't love for a living. The difference now is that you no longer have something you love doing.

Re:from Notch

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why are you so BROKEN Notch? What is actually wrong with you? Why don't you want to be PAID to have fun?
> Being paid isn't a bad thing. Being paid to do something you love isn't a bad thing. Even bad work doesn't need to be boring and unfun.

Notch *is* paid. He's scooped more than you or I or nearly anyone else on slashdot will scoop in their entire career, and has decided it's a whole lot more fun to work on things that don't involve the public, because fans and business people crawling up your ass and hanging on your every word isn't fun unless you want to be a quasi-celebrity more than a hacker.

He doesn't owe you or any of the other sperglord fans anything. You're the BROKEN one.

Re:from Notch

[TechNeilogy]

"If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately."

I'm neither rich nor wildly successful and there are days when I feel like this.

Throwing chairs was less costly

[Anonymous Coward]

Minecraft is a brand at this point. I don't think that Microsoft will be able to make any more money off of the brand, at least with how it is run now.

I wasn't bothered by this acquisition when I first heard of it at the $2b mark, I just thought that no one would be stupid enough to pay that much for a willfully incomplete game. Can I hope for some proper development of Minecraft now or maybe a better version in a Minecraft 2.0 instead of all the dropped other projects that Notch can't get his mind around finishing?

Re:Throwing chairs was less costly

[SJHillman]

"a willfully incomplete game"

I don't know which cave you've been in for the last decade or so, but a great deal of games are now sold before completion. Developers, especially indies, realized that people absolutely love putting down $20 for a alpha/beta game that's getting new features added every few weeks/months. I have to say, having Minecraft add new features every few months gave me significantly more interest and play time than if I just started with all of those features already there. It doesn't appeal to everybody, of course, but neither does any finished game.

Re:Throwing chairs was less costly

[Anonymous Coward]

My intent with that phrase is that Minecraft was meant to have a stronger RPG aspect to it, and since it became popular, they only release minor updates from a team too small to do anything serious with it, while Notch decided to work on not finishing other projects instead of putting any direction into the original product that was sorely needed. With the amount of money he has, he could have hired more developers and make the game that he apparently did not want to make.

Re:Throwing chairs was less costly

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know which cave you've been in for the last decade or so, but a great deal of games are now sold before completion. Developers, especially indies, realized that people absolutely love putting down $20 for a alpha/beta game that's getting new features added every few weeks/months

Yeah and *MANY* have also abused it. It works for some types of games. Not others. Something where there is a story arc it fails badly. For something where there seems to be a craft mechanic it works usually. It works because 'they added new things to make'. But the basic game is mostly the same.

I have skipped many games that were not done. It has worked well for me. As apparently many of them will never be finished. My wife is still waiting on parts 4-6 on one of her games. Its been 2 years. They are not going to finish. I am still waiting on the other half of broken age.

Godus pretty much pissed off everyone with its model. They released too early really. They ended up making a fairly bland game and the 30th reset of the whole game seems to make people think 'maybe I do not want to play this and lose all my progress again'.

It seems to work better if the game is 'mostly done'. Then things are added in. People feel like they are getting something and pretty good value. But here is an alpha buggy crashy incomplete thing? Well not so much.

RIP Minecraft.

[The Cisco Kid]

Microsoft will ruin it, one way or another.

Re: RIP Minecraft.

[Anonymous Coward]

And nothing of value was lost.

Re:RIP Minecraft.

[mwvdlee]

Microsoft has finally found a way to mitigate the development cost of Clippie by replacing Minecraft creepers.

Re:RIP Minecraft.

[Richy_T]

I'm looking forward to the "Added shark and waterskis" update.

Re:RIP Minecraft.

[mrjimorg]

DLC - sharks $5, waterskis $5, jumping ramp $5. If you want the sharks to have lazers, then they'll cost $10

Re:RIP Minecraft.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I saw a mod for that back when 1.4.6 was the latest version.

More evidence for the existance of the Tech Bubble

[Anonymous Coward]

Mojang is nowhere close to being actually worth that amount. If you've got money in tech stocks. SELL NOW! We are clearly in a tech bubble and within a few years it is going to pop and take out the world economy in the process.

metro minecraft will suck big time

[Anonymous Coward]

metro minecraft will suck big time

Re:Will continue to be developed for other platfor

[Anonymous Coward]

More specifically, they might have a harder time working with 4J on the PlayStation versions. Half the reason why consoles have such ridiculously stupid NDA terms is from a mistaken belief that their consoles' APIs have massive amounts of valuable trade secrets in them (they don't); the other half of said reason is to keep third-party development comfortably under the control of the platform owners so they can keep skimming their 30% cut. From Sony's POV, Microsoft buying out a small Swedish game developer sounds like an attempt to get access to their trade-secret APIs, and I wouldn't be surprised if Sony's lawyers are being rushed to find *any* contractual term they could use against Microsoft or Mojang.

Then again, Rare was able to publish a number of Game Boy Advance titles while owned by Microsoft, so the NDA wall isn't that ironclad.

Another case of Skype, but for gaming

[Jonifico]

I can already see Microsoft implementing changes in Minecraft for the sake of getting money, just like they did with Skype. I hope Mojang enjoy the cash as the game slowly fades away.

Re:Another case of Skype, but for gaming

[Ash-Fox]

I can already see Microsoft implementing changes in Minecraft for the sake of getting money, just like they did with Skype.

Since Microsoft bought Skype, I have seen additional platforms added, better Android applications, I've been refunded my Skype Premium and provided that functionality for free...

hope Mojang enjoy the cash as the game slowly fades away.

They're buying Notch's shares (he offered them publicly after the lawyer fiasco Mojang did). Mojang doesn't get to see that money in other words.

Re:Another case of Skype, but for gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Microsoft bought Skype, I have seen additional platforms added, better Android applications, I've been refunded my Skype Premium and provided that functionality for free...

That's "for now." If we've learned anything from Microsoft, it's that nothing remains "free" forever. Like all pushers, the first one's free....

Re:Another case of Skype, but for gaming

[Blakey Rat]

What changes have Microsoft made to Skype "for the sake of getting money"? I haven't seen any.

Re:Another case of Skype, but for gaming

[Ash-Fox]

That's "for now." If we've learned anything from Microsoft, it's that nothing remains "free" forever. Like all pushers, the first one's free....

I've been paying for Skype subscriptions since forever. I had a subscription before Skype was even owned by PayPal and eBay. So far Skype is providing things I want and I pay for it. Did I really care that Skype Premium is now free? No, in reality I would have probably kept paying for it, if it wasn't.

Dang it!

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a fun game for kids to play and now it's going to turn into a Windows only game. Great, just great.

Re:Dang it!

[Ash-Fox]

This was a fun game for kids to play

It's a fun game for trolls to play too.

now it's going to turn into a Windows only game

I think trolls would benefit from this change, more targets on a single platform that is most commonly used by trolls.

This is insane...

[Agares]

Minecraft is a great game and all, but who in their right mind would buy any game franchise for this much? I don't see how they could possibly make their money back off of this one. I am happy for the creator though since he is now set for life.

Re:This is insane...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's small change for Microsoft, but this is yet another desperation move by Microsoft, as explained in this Reuters article.

Microsoft needs Minecraft to boost mobile ambitions
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/12/us-mojang-microsoft-idUSKBN0H72EV20140912

Re:This is insane...

[geekoid]

People who know more then you.

Re:This is insane...

[Agares]

You need to get down off of that high horse of yours. If I am wrong I am wrong, I just don't see the value in spending this much on a game. If it pays off for Microsoft then great.

Re:This is insane...

[tibit]

I think that this is really the "famous last words", if there were any. Those "people who know more" have seemingly been wrong for more than a decade now. See the dot-com bubble, the housing bubble, the mortgage securitization fiasco, etc. All done by people who "know more". I'm almost inclined to start shorting MS.

Re:This is insane...

[Anonymous Coward]

This from someone who can't spell 'than'..

The big question is 'why' ?

[tekrat]

Isn't Minecraft last week's news? The time to buy them was before the minecraft bubble. Now it's too late. That's like buying Tesla *after* the market for high-end electric cars has been saturated. Unless this developer has a new trick up their sleeve (unlikely); they aren't going to be creating anything bigger than what they already have. They are on their way down, not on their way up. So the buy makes no sense to me, except as another asset to sell off later, when MS is against the ropes and slowly dying. MS seems to constantly be throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. That's not a sound policy.

Re:The big question is 'why' ?

[Andy_R]

Microsoft only does well in areas where it has a monopoly. What it's doing here is not buying an asset, it's buying retrospective market share and killing a competitor. Mojang sold a lot of games before Notch left just like Nokia sold a lot of phones before the Elop disaster. It doesn't matter to Microsoft that Nokia imploded or that Mojang's main asset (Notch) left, the point isn't to have their assets or to actually do anything with the brands, that's just a bonus if it happens. The point is simply for them not to be competitors any more.

Re:The big question is 'why' ?

[ZombieBraintrust]

Unless the market has already decided that Minecraft is on the way down and the price has finally become something reasonable. Could be Notch was shopping this around for 10 billion before. I think a Minecraft game still has plenty left in it. I would purchase a version that had smaller blocks. I would purchase a version with an actual story. I would even try an Minecraft mmo.

Re:The big question is 'why' ?

[Alomex]

A long long time ago Microsoft was able to compete in the open marketplace. Then Digital Research DR-DOS happened, which was technically superior to MS DOS. In a panic upper management authorized the insertion of codes disabling aps from running on DR-DOS.

Microsoft has never looked back from that key moment. Since then the entire game for MS has all been about leveraging market share rather than quality applications. This is why they can't turn the XBox into profitable division, because as successful as it is in terms of market share, it has not yet become a monopoly. Any other half alive company (no Sony doesn't count) would be raking in the billions with this type of market share. Not so Microsoft

Re:The big question is 'why' ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a good point, but there's a cult following for Minecraft, and when Microsoft makes Minecraft 2* there are going to be millions who buy it just to see if it's any better. As one person noted, selling to existing customers for $10 a pop would earn $0.5B. Even at a 50% retention rate, that's $0.25B. If they sell for $30-60, that's $0.75B - $1.5B, which is up to about half of their purchase price. Of course, they have manufacturing and distribution fees in that as well, it's not 100% profit after all, but it's something.

Add in that they now get $$$ for all Minecraft merchandise(which is everywhere) and it could be very easy for them to recuperate that $2.5B. They don't need a smash hit. And while Microsoft has its embarrassing flops, most of its output is squarely in the 'not bad - not great' range, aka: mediocre. They can make money from mediocre. They don't need a smash hit or massive innovations. They just need it to be above the point where people are disgusted enough to return it for a refund.

If they add in microtransactions, they could be profitable in a year or two easily.

*New and improved modding APIs! Always connected feedback from fans of your mods! New modding marketplace for new content from developers and the modding community! More pixelated pixels! blah blah DRM blah blah

Re:The big question is 'why' ?

[steelfood]

That's a foolish waste of $2.5B. At least with Nokia, Microsoft weakened them significantly before outright buying them out. With Nokia, the hardware development was what's valuable. That's why they're getting rid of the brand, and why Elop switched to Windows Phone so easily.

With Minecraft, the brand itself is the only real valuable thing. The code itself isn't worth terribly much, considering it wasn't too well-written, and the game itself is not hard to clone (Minecraft itself is a clone of a game). The few Minecraft-only mobs (creeper, enderman, etc.) are really the only bits of the game worth money, and even then, the mobs are much more valuable as brands than as code.

The ecosystem (mods, modpacks, texture packs, etc.) taken as a whole is worth a ton more. But Microsoft doesn't have a very good track record of managing their communities, so I imagine they'll eventually squander that. Hell, I'm pretty certain most mod devs are already thinking of where to move their stuff next.

Throwing devs at the mod API and getting it out the door (after what, 3 years?) might help with the exodus, but that'd be a stopgap measure. People probably won't leave limbo until Minecraft 2 comes out, and at that time, we'll finally know what direction Microsoft's going to take the game. But by then, most mod devs are probably going to be long gone.

Anyway, to your point, Minecraft wasn't really competing with Microsoft. Yes, its ability to run natively on Mac and Linux is a bit of a thorn, but the fact that it runs on Windows as well makes it less so. The lack of a version for Windows Phone (and Metro) was also annoying, but it's really one very, very small drop in the bucket of problems with that whole mess. There's a version for XBox, so it's not like Microsoft was missing out on anything there. Microsoft isn't going to pay $2.5B to make an incidental (at best) competitor go away. They have to have plans for the purchase, bigger plans than just bringing it to Windows 8 and Phone.

What those are, and whether they'll be any good, well, time will tell.

Re:The big question is 'why' ?

[MaWeiTao]

I'm not sure what rock you've been living under if you believe Minecraft is last week's news. I might have thought so too until I started noticing that kids are more into Minecraft than at any point in the past. I think the cultural impact of that game has thus far been underestimated.

Outside of Farmville, Candy Crush and that class of social games I've never seen a game cross gender lines like Minecraft. I can't recall every seeing a game with such widespread, universal appeal, period. Super Mario Bros doesn't even come close. Walk through any store with a Minecraft book or toy in hand and you'll have a half-dozen kids comment on it. Every boy I've met under 14 plays the game and seems to do so on a regular basis.

It's possible Minecraft is peaking, but I personally think this is uncharted territory for any game. It's on the level of a Facebook in it's ubiquity. Someone will eventually unseat both, but it won't be easy. In the meantime there's so much that can be added to Minecraft to sustain that popularity, and significant updates still come on a regular basis.

Not that Microsoft couldn't kill the game by sticking everything behind pay walls but hopefully they'll be smarter than that.

Re:The big question is 'why' ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mojang's main asset isn't any of the staff, it's Minecraft related merchandise. All Microsoft has to do to keep the money flowing is to not fuck with the Minecraft community.

Notch hasn't contributed anything to Minecraft for some time now.

Re:The big question is 'why' ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Outside of Farmville, Candy Crush and that class of social games I've never seen a game cross gender lines like Minecraft

I believe women still slightly outnumber men in World of Warcraft, a trend that started as of 2012 or so. Plenty of sources on that one.

I can't recall every seeing a game with such widespread, universal appeal, period. Super Mario Bros doesn't even come close.

Then you're either very young, or not a gamer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
=40.24 million copies sold

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
=54 million copies sold

Considering the size of the video game market and industry today and how mainstream it has become compared to almost 30 years ago, I'd expect those numbers to be much, much further apart. This information doesn't equate to Super Mario Brothers not being a phenomenon in its own era.

Re:The big question is 'why' ?

[RyoShin]

The point is simply for them not to be competitors any more.

I think they're actually buying their way into competition.

Though there are rumors that Microsoft will sell off the Xbox portion, they're still running the race. The Xbone is floundering hard, and Microsoft wants to diversify. A big thing right now are open-ended creative/interaction games, where you don't necessarily play towards a goal or endgame, you just play. Minecraft is at the fore-front of this, but it's on everything. Sony has Little Big Planet, Nintendo has Animal Crossing (and, to a much lesser extent, Tomodachi Life), the PC has Garry's Mod and probably a whole crap ton of stuff I'm forgetting. Microsoft has shown off Project Spark, but that's still in the nebulous future and doesn't seem to have much hype surrounding it.

Minecraft is now. with lots of hype. While they won't be pulling it from other devices, they can halt all new porting and put Mojang to work on a sequel that they have complete control over and release only for the Xbone (and maybe Win9 if they want to pull a Halo 2 again). Even if they don't try to do Minecraft 2, they still get all the merchandising, new DLC (which happens to be distributed only to Xbone...), and revenue from sales to other devices.

Re:The big question is 'why' ?

[jwhitener]

Isn't Minecraft last week's news?

Not to the millions of people playing every day.

14 million PC sales, and the fairly recent port to xbox sold 10 million more copies.

Not to mention all the physical merchandise: google product search

   

I am guessing they will make a sequel

[stewsters]

My guess is that 2.5 billions is more than Minecraft and was worth. So why would Microsoft buy it?
They said they wont make changes to Minecraft, so how will they make money?

Announcing Minecraft 2, high definition, exclusively for XBone. In game mod store, where you can sell your texture packs for 99c and you get to keep 33% of the profit! That's how you push consoles to kids who grew up on the Minecraft while still raking in money.

Re:I am guessing they will make a sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

They hope to turn it into Second Life.

Re:I am guessing they will make a sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

They said they wont make changes to Minecraft, so how will they make money?

Ceasing development on Minecraft isn't making changes to it, and now that they own the IP they can take it and rewrite it in C# ("Minecraft 2") as a native-mode application for Xbox, Windows Mobile, and Windows 8+ (making sure it won't install on Windows 7 or earlier to help force upgrades). By rewriting it from Java to C#, they'll also get rid of those pesky modders who make changes to the game outside Microsoft's control.

Re:I am guessing they will make a sequel

[PhrostyMcByte]

They said they wont make changes to Minecraft, so how will they make money?

I've seen kids wearing Minecraft backpacks and shirts, said something like "hey cool! what're you building right now?" only to discover that while they've heard of the game they haven't actually played it.

I suspect these paraphernalia stand to make a lot more money than the game does.

As far as coming out with sequels, I'm not sure how well that would work anyway. Minecraft prides itself on being extremely basic, letting the player provide the creativity. What could a sequel possibly provide that didn't do away with that premise?

Anyway. Worth 2.5 billion? Highly doubtful, especially looking at the lackluster response to anything non-Minecraft they've brought out.

Re:I am guessing they will make a sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose MS saw, Minecraft players were spinding a lot more time in that game, than in any other Xbox title. That makes them target for marketting and, as you said, paid for DLC on top of the merchandising market.

What they do not realize is, that owners of most of those 54 mio. copies do not want that and the way Minecraft was published and developped was appealing to them, because it was slower and more transitional than the current game market. MS will probably try to turn Minecraft into a 60$ for 5 hours of gameplay, 10$ for 2 hours more kind of product and fail.

Re:More evidence for the existance of the Tech Bub

[SJHillman]

Why aren't they worth that much? What do you value them at? The value of Minecraft is way, way beyond those 50 million copies sold. Minecraft has a metric fuckton of merchandising out there - people love the merchandise more than they love the game. It would also give them control of the IP to use it in marketing elsewhere as well. Picture, instead of Clippy, we could have Microsoft Creeper.

RIP Minecraft

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even play the game, but I know what inevitably happens to Microsoft's acquisitions and 'business partners'.

The Minecraft OS

[Neo-Rio-101]

The thing with minecraft is that it has the ability to be THE interface of a future Xbox, or even Windows
Heck, Windows 8 already has a blocky, tiled interface already. This would just give it three dimensions.

Re:The Minecraft OS

[kuzb]

Microsoft Bob, creeper edition.

Re:The Minecraft OS

[cyberchondriac]

And you'd have endermen and creepers instead of the BSOD.

Re:The Minecraft OS

[Rich0]

That's a nice document you have there...

Re:The Minecraft OS

[Anonymous Coward]

And cubes have 6x more ad space than tiles!

Re:The Minecraft OS

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing with minecraft is that it has the ability to be THE interface of a future Xbox, or even Windows
Heck, Windows 8 already has a blocky, tiled interface already. This would just give it three dimensions.

I'm not sure OP meant this as a joke...

Will Stephen Elop be put in charge?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, he's the senior MS exec with first hand experience with running Scandanavian development teams.

Will continue to be developed for other platforms

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Mojang, Microsoft has agreed not to meddle in the development of the game for other platforms

Oh, well, if Microsoft said so then that's all settled. I feel much better now.

Thing MS needs to address right now.

[Deathlizard]

1) Pay to win Clause in Eula: Keep or Scrap. Scrapping it would make a lot of friends in the Minecraft Community, Especially server admins and considering it started the whole Bukkit mess. Speaking of Bukkit...

2) Open source the server: Yes or No. MS (Or Mojang for that matter) doesn't make money on the server. Open sourcing it would also be a Olive branch to the Minecraft community. It obviously wouldn't be GPL, but MS-PL or MS-RL is a possibility.

3) Java: Yes or No. MS Hates Java and Oracle. I'm sure at some point they will make an attempt to make Minecraft on a more Microsoft Friendly Code Platform. This could be good news or bad news depending on which OS platform you use, and which code platform they decide to build it on.

Re:Thing MS needs to address right now.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Considering that money in question will not go to microsoft, I think the answer is obvious. Heck, be grateful you don't need CAL license for every user.

2) Can church rent a building to a brothel? Sure can. But wont do it. And it doesn not matter slightest how much money Mojang does on server now. What matter is how much money could be possibly squeezed off it to cover that 2.5G bill.

3) This is off the table. You dont spend that kind of money just to promote C#. Of course, when last mojagsta is removed and development shifted to Redmond, this will be serious question, but that will (hopefully) take some time.

Microsoft needs Minecraft to boost mobile ambition

[Anonymous Coward]

Reuters' words, not mine.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/12/us-mojang-microsoft-idUSKBN0H72EV20140912

The software company's Windows Phone system has only 2.5 percent of the world's smartphone market, and its Surface tablet barely more, according to tech research firm IDC. Growth is hampered because many app and game developers ignore it.

"If you look at iOS, Minecraft has been a top-grossing game for quite some time, if Microsoft could on Windows phones give players a unique and compelling experience that you can't get on the other platforms, that could be a driver to sell devices to existing Minecraft fans.”

Microsoft does not disclose numbers of users of Windows Phones, and declined comment on the deal.

Markus Persson, the game's creator and co-founder of Mojang, said last year that Windows phones are so insignificant in terms of market share that they are not worth developing for.

This saddest thing...

[manchineel1499]

about this story is that my mom told me about it 3 days before I read it on Slashdot. :-(

Re:This saddest thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hoy! Slashdot is slow to report on the news but at the time your mom told you about this it was just a rumor. This morning it became official.

The rumor was posted 5 days ago.

Your mom says "hi".

Re:Will continue to be developed for other platfor

[mwvdlee]

a mistaken belief that their consoles' APIs have massive amounts of valuable trade secrets in them (they don't)

I seriously doubt they're that stupid.
MS is probably one of the first to get "access" to a competitors' SDK/API and vice versa and those companies will be damn well aware of this.

Liar, Liar...

[NormAtHome]

"Of course, the promise is to keep all products supported as they are" so many big company's say that to help smooth over any objections to the purchase but those promises are seldom kept. To quote one of my favorite movies, what's the community to do after the fact use the "Liar, liar pants on fire defense".

Re:Liar, Liar...

[Anonymous Coward]

They only have to release an "Improved Version", and concentrate on that. They can leave the old version "as it is" and make an Shiny Bright Super Fule Featured Exclusive, that -of course- does not have to run on any other platform than the Great Xbox...

Or just throw out java and replace with C# (with windows-exclusive extentions to prevent running on other platforms) or something like that, and they are done..

All that without breaking their word...

Re:More evidence for the existance of the Tech Bub

[jawtheshark]

Picture, instead of Clippy, we could have Microsoft Creeper.

How apt....

Re:More evidence for the existance of the Tech Bub

[Anonymous Coward]

The value of Minecraft is way, way beyond those 50 million copies sold. Minecraft has a metric fuckton of merchandising out there
 
This.
 
But hey, what do you expect when 90% of the same crowd thought Apple actually bought Beats for the headphones alone.
 
This really isn't the right place to try to get a serious discussion going about business... or science or culture or politics...

I know where they can host the servers!

[Weaselmancer]

They can put them in the room that used to hold all of Hotmail's servers. Plenty of space there.

Wrong Game

[freudigst]

I thought they paid $2 billion for Minesweeper.

Re:More evidence for the existance of the Tech Bub

[Richy_T]

Wrong!

We're in a whole-stockmarket bubble. There's not many good places to run.

Cue Minecraftsoft jokes (n/t)

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

MS mobile phones and surface

[Anonymous Coward]

Most likely microsoft sees it as the "killer app" for their touch screen based devices in particular the mobile phone OS of microsoft

Re:More evidence for the existance of the Tech Bub

[Xest]

"Picture, instead of Clippy, we could have Microsoft Creeper."

Sneaks onto your screen when you least want it to and then gets in the way and blows everything up? Yeah, that'd make an apt replacement for Clippy certainly.

Grab 'em while they're young

[MeesterCat]

I presume this is just an extension of Microsoft's attempt to grab users while they're young and impressionable and hopefully engender some brand loyalty, much in the same way they throw loads of free (or very, very cheap) at the Educational sector.

Re:More evidence for the existance of the Tech Bub

[geekoid]

No, we are not.
Calm down.

There goes another great game :-(

[Anonymous Coward]

For about $25 you got a great game with free updates.

Now it's going to get "commercialized" - every thing is going to cost more money. Updates, DLC, etc. Wonder if it'll go closed source and mods won't work anymore....well not without a special license from M$ anyway....

Re:There goes another great game :-(

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it's going to get "commercialized" - every thing is going to cost more money. Updates, DLC, etc. Wonder if it'll go closed source and mods won't work anymore....well not without a special license from M$ anyway....

And nothing of value was lost.

If you think bears are around the corner

[tepples]

We're in a whole-stockmarket bubble. There's not many good places to run.

Stock analyst Bartholomew Simpson has an idea: "Eat my shorts." If you think the market is at or near the top of a bubble, try a short ETF so that the coming bear market will work for you.

Re:If you think bears are around the corner

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly the same was said before the last crash.

Why? Because people believe that they deserve to win big, and therefore anything that stops that happening, MUST BE WRONG.

Let someone else get it in the shorts, just last long enough for me to cash in!

Re:If you think bears are around the corner

[Richy_T]

I'm planning on the lines that anything to do with the $ is risky in the medium term. Check out what BRIC is getting up to and you'll see why.

Goodbye, Minecraft

[gregthebunny]

Embrace, extend and extinguish

'twas nice to know you while we did!

I was actually thinking of buying minecraft soon

[Culture20]

Friends are still happily playing it. Figured it might be a game that is fun for the long haul. Now I know it will be ruined. MS game DRM was what made me eschew modern games in the first place.

Which is it?

[CPIMatt]

Seems like there are two options for Minecraft at this point.

1 - Minecraft is the online version of Lego which will delight kids and adults for generations to come.

2 - It is more akin to Farmville and unlike Zynga, Mojang sold out at the peak.

Seems to me Minecraft is more like 2 than 1.

-Matt

Re:Which is it?

[darronb]

Given the number of YOUNG kids who are playing this game for a substantial fraction of their lives... it'll totally be (1).

My son at 7 has played for at least two years so far. While he keeps trying out clones of various sorts and other games... they never go anywhere. He's playing Minecraft or watching Minecraft videos on Youtube to the tune of about 25% of his free time. (and THAT is just because that's all we'll let him do)

He's now moved to online servers and doesn't seem to want to bother to play on Dad's server any more. (*sigh*) By the way... any Minecraft players out there keep the language clean on public servers please! :)

Maybe it won't be quite as huge as Lego... or maybe it will be bigger. What it will be is pretty damn big.

Clearly, someone at MS said

[wiredog]

We must not have a Minecraft gap!

Minecraft = Mindshare.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the purchase of Minecraft by Microsoft is less about the game and more about future mindshare.

My nieces and nephews are pretty much addicted to this game and the Minecraft craze doesn't appear to be letting up any time soon. It's what is 'cool' with the up and coming generation. Microsoft is any thing but. Now Microsoft can attach its name to a hot property and *hope* to stay relevant with a group that for the first time in a long time is growing up in a post-Windows world.

In other words, if you can't be cool *cough Microsoft cough*, buy cool.

Re:More evidence for the existance of the Tech Bub

[Richy_T]

Time will tell. I don't need to calm down. I'm perfectly calm but I can see what's happening and huge amounts of money with nowhere else to go are flowing into the stock market currently.

Sad day...

[Anonymous Coward]

No the bad thing in this is that Microsoft is not known for high quality and fast development... In fact they do the opposite. development takes a loooooong time and is full of massive bugs...

And i think we can say good bye to free updates and regular development snapshots too.. Too bad Mojang was not in stock traded corp. I would have bought few shares...

Re:Sweet

[captjc]

I can't wait for the SQL: Data Minecraft!

Hey, Satya!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you happen to notice how Linux users pay more for games than other kinds?

I have this great idea: why not selling a Linux-based XBox with Linux software, including Linux games?

Of course, the promise is to keep all products...

[Yakasha]

Is anybody here still waiting for the Mac version of any Bungie games?

Neither am I. I'll just uninstall Minecraft now...

So they're that desperate for....

[kuzb]

...minecraft on windows phone?

It binds the galaxy together

[mdblake]

"I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced."

Why?

[publiclurker]

It's already blocky enough.

Keeping products as they are

[Curunir_wolf]

the promise is to keep all products supported as they are.

Oh, well that's okay then. Wait... isn't that what they said about Skype?

Re:Keeping products as they are

[i kan reed]

You'll think this is way off topic, and that's fine.

I just had to check, since the SFPD has made it clear that Sarkeesian reported exactly the threats she said she did, do you acknowledge you're wrong?

I read that news and decided to dig up the first person in the Sarkeesian thread who was saying that.

So... I'm reaching out to you, as one of the people who justified the shitbaggery that happened with that particularly idiotic line of reasoning, in the vain hope that you'll change your mind on exactly the evidence you demanded.

Re:Keeping products as they are

[Curunir_wolf]

Pretty sure you responded to the wrong post, there, because IDK WTF you're going on about...

Re:Keeping products as they are

[i kan reed]

Way back in the now closed Sarkeesian thread, you made the claim that she made up the threats and that there was no police report.

Since this has now been proven to be a factually incorrect statement... I want to know if being objectively wrong about Sarkeesian causes you to reevaluate your views. Or whether you'll just drift over to a new excuse.

Re:Keeping products as they are

[Curunir_wolf]

Way back in the now closed Sarkeesian thread, you made the claim that she made up the threats and that there was no police report.

Yes, this is off-topic as crap. Why are you harassing me? It's pretty douchey on your part.

I looked at the woman's history, and she is a confirmed liar and publicity hound. I NEVER claimed she made up the threats, ONLY that without confirmation her word alone is not credible.

the SFPD has made it clear that Sarkeesian reported exactly the threats she said she did, do you acknowledge you're wrong?

I would acknowledge that credible evidence exists that she did, in fact, file a police report, if you were to post a link to some credible source of the report. Or am I supposed to simply accept your word for it? As for acknowledging that I'm wrong - what I said is still not wrong (but it is not relevant if there is a police report). What's wrong is your characterization of what I said. Will you acknowledge that?

Minecraft 2:The Search For More Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds good to me.

Most ambitious gaming purchase?

[clevershark]

"The move marks the tech giant's most ambitious video game purchase"

Wouldn't that have been Bungie? You know, the company that made MS billions from the Halo franchise and effectively killed gaming on the Mac for a decade?

Re:Most ambitious gaming purchase?

[WiiVault]

That was my thought as well. Also the Halo brand is pretty proven as it's multiple sequels have been blockbusters as well. Minecraft hasn't yet been tested to that extent. Is it as durable of a name? Only time will tell so who knows.

Re:Will continue to be developed for other platfor

[Anonymous Coward]

"According to Mojang, Microsoft has agreed not to meddle in the development of the game for other platforms, although they point out that they can't do anything about any objections platformholders might have about distributing a Microsoft game."

And you know what Mojang's opinion means at this point? Absolutely NOTHING. They can't tell their new owner to honor their intended promises, even if it were written into the deal. All they have to do is replace the boss with someone willing to change the company on Microsoft's behalf and POOF! It's happened with every other developer that's been bought out thus far that came out and said they were told/promised nothing would be changing.

I'll never get a Minecraft Realm myself. I didn't like several things about them anyway, but if I did have a Realm at this point, I'd have cancelled it upon hearing this news.

Will continue to be developed for other platforms

[Anonymous Coward]

NOKIA, nuff said.

Re:Will continue to be developed for other platfor

[Anonymous Coward]

zune

Re:Will continue to be developed for other platfor

[dgatwood]

And you know what Mojang's opinion means at this point? Absolutely NOTHING. They can't tell their new owner to honor their intended promises, even if it were written into the deal. All they have to do is replace the boss with someone willing to change the company on Microsoft's behalf and POOF! It's happened with every other developer that's been bought out thus far that came out and said they were told/promised nothing would be changing.

Depends on how good their lawyers are. If they write into the contract a term that says that all rights revert to the original authors if the new owner violates such a term, then yes, they can force the new owners to honor those promises.

I am guessing they will make a sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah they wont make changes, can be interpreted as we stop its development immediately and replace it something awful...

Microsoft can now kill Java... and modding

[aepervius]

The way it was told to me practically now what happens is that the modding community reverse engineer the java hooks and put modding in by overloading the methods in those hooks. Kill java, make it a bin and you almost certainly kill the modding community overnight, and let us be honest there are far too many people now not using vanilla anymore. Instantly you reduce the appeal of minecraft to a huge population, you kill servers, etc...

Re:Microsoft can now kill Java... and modding

[Bing Tsher E]

However, they could make it a binare, and develop and publish an API that supports their language of choice, whatever that might be. A recruitment tool for their dev platforms and languages that entices many thousands of 7-15 year olds to get involved coding for it could be worth the $2.5B all by itself.

we know what is going to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

50% of the employees will be laid off, brand will be abandoned in favor of Microsoft Azure WindowsCraft and it will integrate well with windows phone. Then the other 50% of employees will quit and whatever is left will be sold to Zynga/King for $1.

Re:Will continue to be developed for other platfor

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehh... did it not occure to you that they in reality ment "the present version"?

So - the brand new shiny polished Minecraft 2 XBox exclusive version that will pused out in an short time after now, is not included in this deal. After all - the new Minecraft 2 is an completley other game than that old rusty clunky original Minecraft, so they do not have to support oher platforms at all..

Just learn to read between the lines you know...

some kind of EULA situation

[drinkypoo]

I was at home with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago when the internet exploded with hate against me over some kind of EULA situation that I had nothing to do with.

Yeah, some kind of EULA situation, like basically outlawing for-pay Minecraft services including hosting, selling packages of items, etc. In short, making most of the best MC servers illegal. The fact that he has nothing to do with it any more suggests that he should indeed uninvolve himself.

Itâ(TM)s not about the money. Itâ(TM)s about my sanity.

He's still a hypocrite given his explosion of hate over Oculus Rift, especially after this statement. He deserves our derision, and he's getting it.

Side effects

[Krokosaur]

So about 50 million users, sold for 2.5 billion. That's about $50 per user. Each account with its own email.

Right now, when you start the Minecraft launcher, it checks with the Mojang servers to see if your account is paid/ok.
Thus, Mojang potentially can track the usage: times, IP used, etc.
How will you feel when this same tracking information will be owned by Microsoft ? (nicely data mined, correlated and potentially being shared with arbitrary three-letter entities)

Then, after that, the launcher will check for new versions of the launcher and I think potentially will download new ones.
Also the same thing happens for the actual game: depending on what Minecraft version you want to start, the corresponding java jars/files/resources are downloaded to your machine.
Currently, in both cases, those seem to be hosted on amazon servers.
Quite likely that will change and they will be hosted on Azure or whatever servers are under Microsoft control.
A windows box downloads upgrades from Microsoft regularly, so that's not much of a discussion there. But a mac/linux box will download all this stuff from Microsoft servers, every time. There is closed source and then there is closed source. Downloading stuff from a game company that cares for its existence (or at least its more or less indie status) is one thing. Downloading stuff from a behemoth that can steamroll any PR disasters of revelations that its binaries contained whatever peculiar/potentially malicious code is another thing. (or just code that doesn't work for competitor's platforms)

Minecraft can collect information about your machine (the "Machine Specs Collection" under "Snooper Settings ..." in the "Options"). Things like OS/java version, graphic card, memory, that kind of things. Yes, you can disable it if you are that concerned about privacy. Now, the code will came from Microsoft. The collection might be mandatory ("it's for your own good because we can improve the user experience") or might contain "subtle" bugs. Sure, such things might exist even now, but, again, as I mentioned, there is closed source and then there is closed source. (see previous paragraph and the bit about "sharing" info further up)

Well, that assumes you will still be able to play it on your beloved linux box, after being rewritten in C#/DirectX (which even if it doesn't happen for the current version, it will very likely happen for future versions, with non-MS platforms being left to rot)

Remember what was in store for the XboxOne before the PS4 forced them to back down ... Now there is nobody to force them.

Re:Will continue to be developed for other platfor

[Bing Tsher E]

No matter what, I don't think Notch wants the code back. Read his farewel lpost.

Page from Apple's book.

[Anonymous Coward]

Get them while they're young.

Creeper alert.

[Anonymous Coward]

Creeper alert.

Gaming platform monopoly is key for Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft monopoly on the desktop is mainly dependent on the windows gaming. Microsoft is not only buying successful platform independent game, they are also preserving their desktop monopoly. Minecraft 2 will be switch to DIrect X.
 

Microsoft saves the world!

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking news:

Parents everywhere are breathing easier now that Microsoft has purchased Mojang. The end is in sight. Given Microsoft's track record of buying and destroying game companies most analysts expect the Minecraft tailspin will be under way by Friday. "Legions of Minecraft addicted kids will start to get that icky sense that comes from playing something managed by Microsoft" says Notch, some guy from Minesoft/Microcraft. Parents will be happy as the addiction fades and their kids return to the normal world of daily beheadings, war, drugs, and good old TV violence.

The bubble is inflating again

[mnt]

And it's only a matter of time before we see another dotcom crash because some people can not get enough money.