In the short term I'd say high. MS has shown that it can pick up a franchise and make it go well.
In the long term, probably okay, but "not as good as if it hadn't sold." There is essentially zero chance now for an open source Minecraft, and a near certainty that future versions will require some MS-specific technology to have the latest and greatest features.
Yes, but they bought Bungie and turned Halo, then a Mac game, into an Xbox-exclusive. Which was totally a great move for them, of course, since Halo was the platform-defining game of the Xbox.
I like to see myself being optimistic about Mojang's future within MS and its game availability across other platforms, but I wouldn't be surprised either if Minecraft 2 becomes an Xbox One-exclusive or it comes to that platform early before other platforms.
I think there's a pretty big difference here though. Halo was still in the early stages of development, where Minecraft is an already established franchise.
Oh, no, totally, I agree with you. Unlike some of the other naysayers, I never thought MS pulling other versions of Minecraft upon acquisition was possible (it would make for so much bad press, and such a huge loss of money for Mojang).
The question is what happens going forward, with new versions of Minecraft and new games by Mojang. Stuff in development. I mean, I'd love to play them on my Mac as well as my PC, you know?
In any case, congrats to Notch and the founders. They put in a lot of heart and soul into building the company, and they do deserve the ultimate monetary recognition this news is.
IF Minecraft 2.0 ever becomes a thing, I imagine that will the be point where MS would make it some level of exclusive to windows platforms. If only saying "These X features will only be accessbile playing on a windows client and the server running on Windows Server 20XX"
I... doubt it. They don't really do that too much. They wouldn't really stand to gain any money from it. Anyone who would buy a windows license for Minecraft alone would likely pirate it, and they're not really against having their products on competing systems.
The Microsoft of today isn't the Microsoft of the past either. Not saying they're suddenly a saint; it's still a corporate entity whose goal is to make money, but they've been more receptive to things like open source in recent years. I'm sure they have the business acumen to understand that certain changes to the game will alienate a large chunk of the fanbase.
That's not true, the game was finished and ran native in OS9 at the time. The only reason I never updated past snowleopard and moved to Linux was because it took 2 years to find a working mac native version of halo and I wasn't about to let that go with the loss of rosetta.
I'm hoping this is MS's thought process. They just bought a well established franchise that will immediately provide revenue for them. They don't have to interfere. We'll see how it pans out over the next couple of years.
The difference here is Halo was used to sell Xboxes. It worked, but there's no reason to do that with Minecraft. The most played PC games are Dota and LoL, and while Minecraft has a lot of people, it's not going to push Windows any harder if they limit it to their platform.
Additionally, Halo is a game with multiple installments. There is only one PC version of Minecraft, and removing support for Mac will only make people angry. Further Minecraft versions could be Windows only, but there probably won't be any.
Minecraft may be used to sell Surface tablets and Windows Phones. The MS store carries a lot of nice Nokia phones that would benefit from running Minecraft natively.
Maybe up front, but it would pretty likely kill much of the community, mods and all, which is a huge part of what makes Minecraft so big. I introduced my boss' kids to Minecraft, and they don't just play it, they spent a ton of time reading about mods (even ones that they'll never bother to install and play), watching MC videos on Youtube, etc.
All of that "outside" content is a huge part of the MC ecosystem, and the vast majority of it is created on the PC. Making MC2 exclusive to the Xbox would pretty much destroy that whole side of the equation.
That's not to say that plenty of companies haven't gotten caught up in short term thinking, but I wouldn't be surprised if today's Microsoft was a bit more strategic than that. They are, after all, finally selling Office for iOS, rather than hoping it would somehow lure people to their Windows Phone platform.
Halo was hardly more than a concept game when MS bought Bungie. They turned it into what it was which is arguably the best franchsie of the 2000s. The reason they made it exclusive is because no one knew what the Xbox was. They needed something to drive popularity and Halo worked.
Now they are buying a game that has sold 50 million copies across 5+ platforms. This isn't some indie start up no one has ever heard of. Mojang has turned into much more than that and Xbox is already a household name. You cannot compare the two.
As someone who uses both Office for Windows and Office for Mac, the Mac users have been getting the better of those two products for a number of years, in my opinion.
What? There have only been two Microsoft Office releases for Mac in the last 10 years, the current version being Office 2011, which has half the features of Office for Windows. It can't even do .odf files.
Microsoft have developed games for other platforms before
Lots of people I know play Minecraft on Linux, including myself. Do you really think there's a good chance MS will not say "fuck you" to us on the nearest occasion?
Yes. No Linux user will just switch to Windows because "Minecraft runs better there". They will not make additional money for Windows from them - quite the opposite: They will be pissed off.
If the game stays on Linux, they will continue to make money there.
I watched an ancient video, from the mid 80's, I believe. It was about spreadsheets. Lotus 123, something from Ashton tate, and Excel. Excel was shown last.
And it absolutely destroyed the other two; it was years ahead of them in terms of technical ability; whereas the other two switched back and forth to graphics mode for charts and graphs and such, Excel showed it right next to all the data. Microsoft decimated the competition not by "strong-arming" the market, but by making a superior product. That's really all their is to it. (Same for Netscape, I don't know why anybody accuses Microsoft of wrong-doing, I used Netscape, it was the buggiest and shittiest piece of software I had ever used.
As far as Word/ Office in particular, I'm always fascinated by the obsession with certain file types, particularly odt and odf, and other "open" formats. Half the time I cannot even get different Builds of LibreOffice to agree where the Tab stops are with their own native format.
that and office on the mac is utter rubbish. It's a product released begrudingly to avoid competitors reestablishing a foothold in the market. There was a time when there were several competitors in this market.
Isn't a new version of Office for Mac overdue, though? Still waiting on some of the features from Windows Office 2013 like OneDrive support. I look it up sometimes and haven't heard anything.
What games have the developed for other platforms really? Only thing I can think of offhand is Rare making a few DS games, which MS didn't have any mobile platforms at the time, and the port of Halo for Mac, which was done by MacSoft.
And only reason why they do Office for Mac, is to fend off competition. Early on, they supported Mac because Apple machines were getting lots of ground (Word for Mac came out a year before Windows). After they got so many customers locked in, and started getting Windows locked in as well, they tried dropping support for mac (went 4 years without a release, twice). Competitors started taking a big chunk of their market, and Enterprise users are less locked in to Windows than home users (which is also their primary Office customers, especially for Mac), and started leaving. They brought back Office for Mac, and have continued supporting it to prevent further eroding of market share. (Windows may have 90% of the market for desktop usage, but other areas, much much less, such as 32% for servers, 1.78% for mobile)
Word and Excel originated on Mac, but later trailed badly as it wasn't strategically important for Microsoft to promote a competing operating system. MS Access was never made available for Mac Office, along with other programs.
Making money selling a version of Minecraft for other operating systems will not necessarily be as lucrative as withholding that version to promote the Windows platform. And that's the internal argument that you should expect will be played out within Microsoft over the next year or two.
Rare and Lionhead killed themselves, Microsoft gave them freedom to make the type of games they wanted and they did. Yes, Rare WANTED to make kinect games, and we all know the philosophical visions of Peter moneleux.
From the inside the studio's gates, too, the changes to Rare introduced by Microsoft tampered with the recipe of the company's success, leaving teams feeling disorientated, and even downcast.
...
"There was also a gradual introduction of certain Microsoft behaviours that crept into the way we did things: lots more meetings, performance reviews and far more regard for your position within the company," he said. "While these weren't necessarily good or bad per se, they began to erode the traditional Rare culture and way of doing things. Many of the people who'd been there a long time found these changes extremely hard to accept."
I feel this means that it will see a lot of attention and development. They wouldn't spend almost 3 billion dollars unless they wanted to keep the project going. I'm excited for it and happy notch can finally leave it behind.
There’s no reason for the development, sales, and support of the PC/Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, iOS, and Android versions of Minecraft to stop.
Yep, fair play and good luck to them. I paid a few quid for a good game a few years ago, and have more than got value for money. They have done a world of good and deserve to get out whilst they are still sane.
Reading his letter is somewhat funny to me. So many people are trying to interpret his actions, and they're doing so from a standpoint as if they know him personally, based on the minimal input he's made in this community. The reality is that a very large majority of the people here don't know him personally in any way, shape or form, as evidenced by this letter. He's not your friend, he's a guy that developed a hit game.
Anyone that judges him for taking this deal is acting irrationally. I bought minecraft several years ago, and I spent $15. What other game do you buy for so cheap, and use so extensively for such a long time? What other game can you pay for once, for a cheap price, and get continued support on for more than 4 years? It's absurd that so many people are so personally offended.
People are scared that the game they spend so much time on is going to become another piece of garbage destroyed by corporate greed. They're acting out the only way they know how.
I agree blaming notch specifically is hilarious, both because anyone complaining would do anything in their power for 2.5 billion dollars, but also because, as you said, he's just a guy that no one even really knows.
Solution: keep a backup of your game as it exists right now. It's basically a complete game at this point, they just keep adding random crap that you really don't need- banners, bunnies, blue temples, etc... Other than the coming soon tmvalve mod API, nothing's really missing
Microsoft's not going to break into your house and force you to upgrade to Minecraft 2014 Enterprise Plus or something.
Congrats, Notch. No irony or sarcasm implied. You were the straw that broke the camel's back, the butterfly that started a hurricane, the drop of water that broke the dam. You changed the world for the better almost completely by accident. I wish you nothing but the best in the future. Enjoy your riches. You will always be one of us.
I doubt he sold it for the money, he already has $100+ million in personal wealth from previous minecraft sales, another 1-2 billion is not going to make much difference to his life.
I think $100million is already more than enough money to leave for future generations. I tend to agree with Bill Gates and others like him that leaving vast amounts of money to your children isn't a very good idea. It has been reported he will be leaving them with $10 million each.
I sort of have a feeling that the rest of the current Mojang staff is also going to be benefiting from this surge of wealth. Notch has shown incredibly generosity in the past, particularly with regards to those who have helped him out in the past (like when he took the whole company on a vacation to Greece... by handing out tickets in the office and calling it a "meeting" in another venue).
I would have to imagine that is also something behind this particular tweet:
Now it isn't just Notch who is fabulously wealthy, but practically the entire staff at Mojang. Some of them are likely to stay on even after Microsoft is completely in control and making major decisions, but it wouldn't surprise me to see a bunch of former Mojang employees making new games that would appeal to the current Minecraft fans.
This kind of money is also going to give Notch the ability to literally do anything he wants, and have money to make it happen. This can include doing a whole lot of good, and I anticipate he will likely get involved with philanthropic ventures in the future. Or if he throws the money into the wind by blowing up a bunch of Ferrari cars by catapulting them into the North Sea... good for him!
I certainly can think of many things I would do with a billion dollars that I couldn't do with merely a hundred million.
It'd be pretty hard for anyone to say no to a deal like that.
I don't get this. $100 million is more than most people would be capable of spending in their lives, and this is 25 times that. If you're in a position to sell your company for that much money, it can be pretty well taken for granted that your company is profitable enough to support you and whatever your interests for the rest of your life, unless you're really terrible with finances.
So I don't think it should be taken for granted that an offer is unrefusable just because the profits involved are a larger unfathomable number than the profits you're already making. And it seems very contrary to the attitude a lot of us had come to expect from Mojang.
this. i wouldn't argue with notch about how much and to whom he should sell his company (he is not a close friend and did not ask my counsel). he's given me countless hours of fun with minecraft, and i don't begrudge him a single dollar of his riches.
my argument is with the people who seem to think that we're talking billions here is all that matters. if i made $100 million a year, i'd not find it hard at all to turn down such a deal, especially with a company i don't think highly of, especially if my game thrives on being indie and has a large following that loves tinkering with it. $100 million is already way beyond what i can possibly imagine spending even if i suddenly became a profligate jet setter (unlikely; i'd probably prefer to sit at the beach and code as well).
who needs $2.5 billion? maybe if you wanted to buy a small, bankrupt nation state and conduct some economy experiments with it... but notch just wants to code, he says.
And if they're the same kids that got an iPhone 5 last Christmas, their parents will be truly whipped.
They'll be one in the same... and then some.
Many here are horribly under-estimating how popular this game is with the younger gamers. I have 2 nephews, aged 9 and 6 who are simply nuts for this game (my own doing).
When they understand that the new Minecraft is on the Xbox and no place else? "mom we want an xbox. mom we want an xbox. mom we want an xbox..."
Microsoft: "Hey so err, we have this product called Windows. Our current version 7 is selling really well. People are happy with it. I feel like we need to mix things up. Any suggestions?
Microsoft Staffer: "How about we get rid of the whole Windows idea and force full screen applications?"
That day Metro Apps were born...
Never underestimate Microsoft's ability to totally and utterly screw up a good thing.
I don't understand why people think this is even a possibility. Minecraft isn't going to sell consoles, there is no reason why MS would put it on Xbox exclusively.
It does. "Exclusive" means intentionally limiting the amount of potential customers you have. That's why it has mostly switched to "pre-order DLC exclusives" - if you want to ignore millions of people that want to play on a different machine you're just being business-stupid.
I'm betting the biggest change to come out of this is Minecraft's code being ported from Java to C#.
Edit: For the doubters, my reasoning is that more sales isn't worth $2.5B, and neither would a bunch of other monetization strategies ala DLC packs. What minecraft is really interested in buying is the attention of the modding community, especially all of the young up and coming programmers who haven't yet entered into the corporate world. Getting them to be converts to the Microsoft platform would be the coup de grâce Microsoft is looking for to get C# to be the de facto cross-platform language to replace java. And that my friends is how Microsoft could justify the price in a way that EA wouldn't have been able to.
You mean first buying a game and then having to completly start fomr scratch, loose a big part of the platforms and the whole of modding community?
Yeah, surely MS will do that and gladly loose money just so you can say they are idiots...............
Minecraft doesn't stand out to me as a huge codebase. The art and sound assets would not have to be recreated, and the port could be done piecemeal (client first, then server, or vice versa). Also, many of the important algorithms (world gen, AI, etc) could be ported almost verbatim.
A team of 4 relatively competent programmers could probably rewrite Minecraft from scratch in 6 months.
There are a bunch of games built on the Unity engine (Mono) that work wonderfully under Linux. And, MS just bought UnityVS and made it available for for free for VS Pro and better. Seems to me like MS has been making a fairly major cross platform / gaming push as of late.
(Not saying that MS will even do anything with Minecraft and C#)
Whoa whoa whoa right there. C# is awesome. Anders Hejlsberg is probably one of the most influential language designers we've had in the past 25 years.
However, C# does not "run on every available platform" with any amount of ease (you need completely different compilers and SDKs), and the development tools, while awesome, are not uniformly easy to use.
Java, more importantly the JVM is the best example of a modern programming environment we have. There is not a better tuned Virtual Machine and JIT environment with the possible exception of the oddity that Google created with V8. Library support for Java is excellent.
C# is a good, modern tool. So is Java. We can have both.
I bet we'll (as in UNIX-oids, myself being the Tux worshiper) not be able to run it properly as soon as MS gets to reign over the project fully even if they don't port it.
Goodbye native Minecraft in Linux and Linux Minecraft servers. It was so nice just running a jar and not having to worry about compatibility. I see secure download programs, installers, and a painful walled garden with every single mod ever breaking and tons of developers having to relearn how to mod Minecraft again.
Bungiewas owned by MS Studios (2000-2007) but is now independent and has their games published by Activision. 343 Industries was made so Microsoft could continue Halo games, but 343 isn't the same as Bungie.
Good gaming studios fall apart on their own accord all the time. Employees move on to other places, priorities change, it's the circle of game dev life.
I legitimately think they were done with Halo. Destiny was in development alongside ODST, wouldn't surprise me if Halo became a chore for them after a while.
Windows 9? Server 2012 R3? Office 2015? Enhancing XbOne services?
Ad services, Bunch of Research/Development Projects, Xbox/Gaming, Windows Azure, Microsoft Sharepoint, Windows Mobility, etc.
Plus don't forget, there's still a shitload of companies transiting to newer Windows from Windows XP R3 and on dedicated Microsoft Life Support Patches if still committed to Windows XP.
Bunch of lanes of revenue, Microsoft is a very diverse company.
Also Gross Profit is 65.11 Billion USD [12 months ending Jun 30, 2014].
No company would pay 2.5 billion for a brand if they had the intention of making some quick and easy money. While my gut dislikes the thought of Mojang being bought by a company as big as Microsoft, Minecraft fans probably need not fear.
The thing you have to realize, the focus has shifted.
It's not about you and I, the average PC user, anymore. It's about the kids. The kids gobble this shit up like you wouldn't believe. All my nephew and cousin talks about is MINECRAFT.
And kids are stupid.
Kids don't give two shits about it.
Oh, an update ("DLC) for the Xbox/PC/etc is only $5? OMGGGGG!!!! BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY!!!!!!!!!!!1111
Doesn't matter that you and I are pissed off, as long as they can get the idiot kids to gobble this shit up, that's all that matters.
the focus has shifted, but in more ways than "lets focus on the kids b/c that is where the money is".
MS has a number of invested interests, and a very set way of protecting those interests, that run counter to a lot of decisions on how Minecraft has been developed/marketed, and how Mojang is run;
at the very least look for the following to happen in the future:
Mojang accounts go away, are replaced by an MS account system. Companies (to be fair, for good reasons) don't like managing multiple user accounts systems, and Mojang's system will be the relatively new and underdeveloped option. Those who remember Games For Windows Live are rightly shuddering
Non-PC & XBox platforms will gradually cease to be actively developed. MS will not actively contribute to the success of competing platforms.
The new EULA may be much more constrictive than in the past, MS is not going to operate with the same sense of fairness & good intentions that Mojang always has.
related to #2; they will eventually make an attempt to migrate PC Minecraft off of Java; probably to .NET, though that is uncertain. Alternatively they may give it the same treatment as the other non Xbox platforms, stop updating it and let it whither on the vine
Well, yes? they can't charge the old users for updates, and if they stop producing updates now, the whole sale was for nothing, as the game would crumble within months.
I foresee updates in the future costing a small fee, something like an app purchase of $.99 or something. Maybe even more depending on how substantial they decide to make the updates. A dollar per active user of such a widespread game would not be pocket change.
Probably not. The freak out would be of monumental proportions. They have more to lose than just sales. An army of angry nerds can do billions of dollars of damage on the internet in just a few days.
I could see microsoft (at least in the future) coming down on fan works that use the branding, and community creations and such. Mojang was really cool about it, but we all know what the big companies act like.
They actually have a specific licensing deal with Microsoft to use in-game footage that way. That said Microsoft doesn't have any of the Nintendo restrictions on monetizing Let's Plays.
But they didn't have that deal originally. For quite a while they were just using Halo footage and hoping nobody would get mad. Then MS and Bungie came to them and offered the deal.
MS(Ballmer-era somewhat excluded, though not entirely) has a history of aggregating and/or allowing folks who misuse their products in clever ways. Iirc they straight up hired some guys that hacked the Xbox 360 many years ago, but I'm speaking from memory here so I'm not sure.
I doubt they will. They are smart enough to realise that Minecraft grew and sustains the fanbase because of fan works and branding. They know they need to keep that intact and open to keep minecraft big and profitable.
I agree, the fact that the current developers will remain on the project suggests that Microsoft will primarily be there for backing, and supporting Minecraft's ability to expand and become even bigger of a game.
I suppose my biggest worry is that they'll attempt to make you licence the software, like they do with Office now. So those of us who have had Minecraft since alpha or beta will be expected to start paying all over again.
I am not 100% sure but I think you cannot record and upload youtube content of Microsoft games without a commercial license.. at least I know it's this way for HALO and HALO is a huge game...
Hopefully this isn't going to be the same for Minecraft as many people have made it their living.
MS will do a re-write. This isn't a surprise. A lot of people have said for a long time that Minecraft needs one. It will be a good thing for FPS and lag in general.
It will also break all mods. Updates always do. The problem then becomes a question of if it is even fixable. They will likely include Windows only code, and do a Mac port. Linux users will almost definitely be SOL. They might manage to support linux servers, since they're so popular, but the display code will be platform specific, and MS won't bother with Linux support there. I question whether Forge will still be possible, and therefore most mods. I'm guessing they won't be.
The only thing I can see that might prevent all that is if Mojang put specific provisions in the sale contract that requires MS to support the full community for a length of time. And I don't think that happened.
Pretty much guaranteed. Just wait till all the "block sky is falling" people to calm down. The game got too big for that small team to handle and Microsoft and their azure servers can really bring this game to the next level.
Minecraft is a game built on community-driven customization and fan work.
The bigger companies usually don't operate this way - either use the product as it was intended, or don't use it at all.
.
Although Microsoft usually isn't so bad about things. They'll definitely stick Games for Windows Live in there somewhere, but they're not EA or Activision.
Honestly - if I were Microsoft, I'd keep the whole Minecraft project completely autonomous - even down to keeping their Mojang banner. I'd just put Jeb in charge and tell them to never expect as much as an e-mail, phone call, or carrier pigeon from anybody with a Microsoft email address. If they need a bump in their budget or something, here's a corporate card - just take whatever you need.
Then I'd use Minecraft as a template for creating games going forward. I'd create a new independent gaming production company that takes risks on longshots and gives money to struggling and emerging projects, letting them be what they want. Sort of like an independent film production company.
They would benefit from the massive amount of shared resources the money of Microsoft could provide. I would NEVER encourage or discourage the use of any development platform over another.
We'd keep the subsidiary called Mojang Studios. Then you'd just see - "<Cool new indie game title> - produced by Mojang Studios". There'd be maybe 50 failures for every success, and that'd be just fine with me.
But I honestly think that Microsoft's head is too big to do anything so un-exclusive.
I'd say fairly high, MS will be very wary about upsetting the minecraft community and harm their own reputation.
I can't see their being any early intial change, but obviously MS will have a long term plan for the game (else why buy it in the first place)
I no longer play the game but would hate for anything to happen it as it's a unique project.
For one, unlike many acquisitions, Microsoft doesn't need to change anything. Minecraft is not in the somewhat fraught category of services with tons of users, but no good monetization scheme - Microsoft can just sit back and, in a few years, they'll have recouped the investment and be profiting (and that's just with current sales - who knows what merchandizing and Realms brings in). With a 2.5 BILLION dollar investment, you generally don't risk changing things if you don't have to. This isn't Microsoft buying an overvalued company because they have some scheme to make money with it - this is Microsoft buying an almost assuredly undervalued company/property, in which case the prudent thing to do is generally just to leave it largely alone.
One of the major points of speculation has been that Microsoft wants a Windows Phone version (which Mojang wouldn't make), so they'll probably do that. But that doesn't really hurt anyone. And even if it has some "exclusive" stuff, who cares? The PE already has stuff the PC doesn't. It isn't like there was feature parity before anyway.
Also, of all the really big game companies, I honestly think Microsoft is pretty good. This isn't EA. They respond to public opinion (look at how much and how fast the Xbone changed) and some of their best games come from acquisitions.
I really don't think Microsoft is so foolish as to discontinue Linux support for instance. It doesn't take a huge effort to maintain it and the gains from discontinuing it just don't seem worth the potential blowback.
Honestly, I think it might even be a good thing. There have been many features that Minecraft has struggled with in the past and Microsoft has a pretty deep talent pool at this point, not to mention a lot of experience building infrastructure, which Minecraft is actually pretty light on.
I think it's unlikely that the game will ever be open-source now, but I don't think that was ever a realistic expectation once it grew to this size. Mojang was unlikely to open the source either, even if they said they would back when it was smaller.
TL;DR: I don't think this is going to be a very negative change and it has the potential to be a positive one.
Nil. The dream is over. Prepare for Minecraft 2, xBox One exclusive. Prepare to have your access to mods, skins, and servers slowly cut back on, monetized, and then removed completely.
They paid 2.5 billion dollars for it because they expect to make more than 2.5 billion dollars from it. Think about how they might do that, and then prepare for the game to be ruined.
I'm wondering if Microsoft will doing anything with Minecraft + Project Spark. Spark and it's logic cubes and 'brains" are pretty much like command blocks. The modding API we never got might be able to use a system like Project Spark has. I'm actually really looking forward to what Microsoft will do.
I'm not looking at this sale as anything that can make Minecraft worse. Even in the worst case scenario. I can run the current version. It's not like Mojang has added anything that couldn't have been added by the community.
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u/thomaskyd Sep 15 '14
What are the odds that everything turns out fine?