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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."
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.
The mobile price is under $10. A $60 price would sell less copies than a $10 version. Also $10 makes the math easy. :)
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.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
"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?
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..
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.
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.
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.
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...