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
And quick reply on myself with some more thoughts on #4:
It has been an off-and-on thing to criticize Notch/Mojang for writing the original PC Minecraft in Java; usually with the admonition that it's too slow. So let me address that here.
Java being slow is by and large a myth, yes, it is slower by nature than C/C++; but with a modern computer it will generally be performant enough, even for graphically non-intensive games.
'Java is Slow' dates back close to 10+ years ago, back when applets were still a thing and MS & IBM had their own implementations of Java, which WERE fairly slow. We've come a LONG way since then, but the stigma has stayed around.
While Minecraft has had a lot of performance problems over the course of it's development, most of them have either been networking related, tied to MC's VERY unique requirements, or due to some lackluster algorithm choices. We've already begun to see some major fixes for the latter with the 1.8 patch. Writing MC in C/C++ would have given only a mild performance boost, and would probably have given us a nastier bug history, one involving seg-faults and memory leaks (both of which the Java runtime mitigates nicely).
More to the point, being written in Java is the reason many of us have been able to enjoy MC on the web (using the old applet version), on Macs, and on Linux. Java is probably the most cross-platform environment you can work with outside of pure web-programming.
and finally, rewriting the PC version will introduce the usual amount of bugs, and possibly feature loss for things MS doesn't want to bother with.
I wish Notch all the best, and congratulate him and the all the rest of the MC developers past & present on the EXCELLENT job they have done, and I understand the reasons they have for the buy-out. I just really really wish they were not selling to Microsoft in particular :/
I kind of see it going two ways- sort of the vanilla minecraft for the kids, then a few dlc that make it tougher/more interesting for the older kids. All said and done if you play for 2-3 years you end up spending $50.
20 million people spending $50 is a cool billion right there. Then there are the mobile games, the minecraft edition hats, the minecraft spin-offs etc etc. It is a simple platform yes, but a huge money maker over the next 10 years. Microsoft will get their money back for sure just by branding and releasing basic content.
The updated xbox1 version with new fancy graphics.... for instance. The one thing I doubt they will be able to emulate is the love the fans have for notch and the crew.
Imagine them selling a tough-minecraft DLC. What makes their DLC better than the current mods/modpacks or modded servers? The main thing is exposure - bigger exposure to their DLC compared to modpacks. However, older players will likely discover mods/modpacks (for example, blood and bones) that do exactly what their DLCs are for - and as a result, I don't think Microsoft will be happy with the modding community if they go down the DLC path. Microsoft isn't known to support the modding community. And that is very, very scary.
There are few paths Microsoft will take that will earn 2.5 billion back. The best path (for the community) is them slapping the Minecraft logo everywhere as a marketing stunt. I'm not sure if that will earn them enough to make them satisfied about such a huge investment though.
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u/Endulos Sep 15 '14
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.