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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."
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.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
By "everyone", please admit to what you are really trying to say.... everyone who matters. Or more correctly, everyone that *YOU* think matters.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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.
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"
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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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.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
They didn't kill the Skype linux version yet: http://www.skype.com/en/downlo...
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.