I can't say that MS should be interesting in this aside from hoping that Minecraft continues to reap money and the "Minecraft" brand is lucrative on a few levels. Serioulsy, does anyone really realistically think the company can make another 'minecraft level' game or could pay back in sales or 'street cred' $2 billion is return value? Of couse not, MS is not buying Mojang for what ist WILL make, but rather for what it reaps in liquid assets and for what it represents as a brand.

Deep respect to Markus Persson and everyone who now works at Mojang, but even they should admit the likelihood of making another 'lightning in a bottle' game is unlikely. Thus Microsoft is really just buying their name, their money stream, and lest of all them as a decent small indie developer with solid cred. But is that worth $2 Billion to MS?

Just from a side view, Markus Persson has admitted repeatedly he is not a good business man, he also tends to let his anger get the best of him, thus the company might be better run with some MS oversight and structure from an office management/HR point of view.

So, bottomline, this might be good for everyone working at Mojang for the sake of stability. This might allow MS to own a 'liquid capital' squirting cash cow. This might give MS some indie cred...although that seems dubious at best since 'street cred' is not really transferable in that way in most cases. But, unless you have $2 billion to waste nobody else should/would have made this deal. MS is just showing it has money to burn.

I think notch is tired

This might be conspiracy theory but it this feels like Microsoft's desperate way to get Minecraft 2 as an Xbox One exclusive. If there is indeed going to be a Minecraft 2 if Mojang is owned by Microsoft, I don't see it going to Playstation. Microsoft could see the game as a system seller, which could possibly mean no PC release. It's kind of crazy to go out and spend that kind of money on hoping that lightning strikes twice, because, honestly, how many more copies can they sell? I guess there is all their skin packs and stuff, but 2 billion dollars is a lot of money.

I think Justin McElroy from Polygon said it (sarcastically) best "Say what you will, but I think we can all agree Microsoft is smart to get out in front of this Minecraft craze".

Judging how micro-transaction heavy MS has been the past year, I really hope they don't ruin Minecraft buy charging for every little thing. "Get 1000 blocks of Dirt for $99.99 - Best Value!" That kind of move, accomponied with the possibility of no PC version to sell Xbox One's could just turn everyone off of the product.

But that's just me being a pessimist.

This certainly doesn't seem to make sense from a game development standpoint, other than to keep the game available on every platform which Mojang are doing anyway, maybe MS just want the merchandise money since it's probably bringing in more than the game ever did.

That being said, if merch was the money maker, then why would Mojang sell and not keep that income for itself.

Additionally, i never understand business decisions so whatever happens is a mystery to me.

"Certified" Windows 8 Phablet support?

This would be huge. The popularity of Minecraft astounds me.

yeah, you are probably right. That much money could tempt everyone I guess. We'll see.

...

The funny thing about this is that if you really start to think about it ... mojang has almost zero output. Everything that is cool about minecraft is made by modders, mojang puts out a minor update maybe 3 or 4 times a year.

That Scrolls-Game seems dead, at least I haven't heard anything about that in ages.

I understand that the Minecraft-brand is probably worth the money, but still paying that much for a studio with nonexistant output ... crazy.

Notch has been silent on twitter since this news broke. It is all but confirmed.

And I love Alan Wake. I'm just not so sure it was Remedy's wish to move to Quantum Break, or it was more Microsoft's will.

Because i take it was Remedy's desire to create Alan Wake given that weird genre description Remedy aimed for - psychologic action thriller. I don't think Microsoft had been pretty happy with it, given its specificity and uniqueness.

To answer some people's confusion, Mojang makes boatloads of money. Twitch makes less money. Mojang has an actual product that people pay for. Meanwhile, I have never subscribed or paid to watch a Twitch channel. Just the business answer, I suppose.

This is so bad for Mojang and gamers. Microsoft killed a great studio years ago with Rare becoming basically a Kinect factory. Though there doesn't seem to be a way to continue to monetize Minecraft. Once sales decline because everyone owns a copy, they've got to hit the drawing board. It's not the kind of game you can iterate every few years. This would have made sense 3 years ago. But now, it's out on everything. Microsoft is buying old news.

Pack it up kids.

They'll pull what Valve did to Counter-Strike. Buy it out, lock it down, and sell it like any other boxed retail product.

The lack of Notch shooting this rumour down on his twitter feed is the Number 1 thing that makes me think this might be actually happening.

Or maybe this is like the Twitch situation where everyone thought it was Google and it was actually Amazon.

Most likely there are talks in the works and talking about it could jeopardize a potential sale/business deal. That doesn't mean the story is true because, like you cited, there could be an alternative for Mojang to choose from. But the best business practice is to clam up and make the best deal possible.

I won't pretend to understand how it feels to have such ridiculous amounts of money. But Notch has previously not really seemed like he likes Microsoft a whole lot.

He clears well above 1bn SEK per year, he was pissed about Facebook buying occulus for about 3 months, he just bought the most expensive apartment sold throughout history in Sweden worth something like 50k USD per square meter. There is probably no whims he can succumb to that would ever make him not the one of the richest people in Sweden.

At that point, if you are a principled guy, is there really a difference between being filthy rich and being filthier rich?

Also there is no point in buying Mojang if you don't also buy the rights to Minecraft, which seems privately owned by Notch, considering Mojang pays him that 1bn SEK in "licensing" per year. The data I saw was probably from 2012, Mojang kept a sum something like 25% of 1bn.

And seriously, what are you gonna do after you buy Mojang for such a huge sum? Minecraft probably won't be this successful forever, and if I am an economist with responsibility for $2bn then I sure as hell should understand that a success worth 10% of Minecraft is very unlikely to come from Mojang or any other company for the foreseeable future between now and eternity.

Edit: 2 billion USD seems like it would break even for Microsoft if they ran Minecraft for something like 10-12 years and it never went down in sales.

I would do some pretty heinous shit for $2bn dollars.

Minecraft is going to/has hit a sales peak where it quits selling new copies. When you buy it for one thing, you're usually set. There is some double dipping with the PC and 360, and when the XONE version comes out I'm sure there will be a little bit there as well. But kids, parents, and most other people without loads of expendable income aren't going to buy the same game for multiple platforms. Microsoft is going to be pissing away a lot of money if they do this. The only real growth opportunity is licensing opportunities, but we see how that went for Angry Birds and Rovio. If they wanted to make lots of money off of Mojang, this should have happened in 2011. They could have brought it exclusively to Microsoft platforms (including tablets and phones, no Android releases) and forced the market into their devices. But now, everyone who wants it has it.

I don't know if I see a whole lot of promise for a new Mojang product. They made one thing that exploded, and that's awesome. As we are seeing with Bungie this week, though, bringing a whole new IP to the table after your previous one made such waves is a tough challenge. I just don't understand where this possibly is worth two billion in cash to Microsoft. I'll be VERY surprised if they make that money back in the next 10 years.

Would you have bought Lego in the 70's for the 1970's equivalent of $2,000,000,000? Minecraft is no longer just a simple game. It is a brand and a platform. Presumably Microsoft sees this and wants to turn Minecraft completely into virtual Lego which made $1.1 billion in pure profit last year.

@jay_ray: But with Lego, you can sell specially colored bricks and kits that make different things from different franchises and universes. People don't want that with Minecraft. Would you sell a pack of different colored dirt? Your 1970s equivalent isn't correct, because back then, Lego hadn't gotten into the modern day vocabulary and everybody's homes yet. Minecraft has. This would be like buying Lego in 2005. But again, they are two different products that won't have the same monetization strategies.

This is basically 2 billion for a brand, considering how easy it is to replicate Minecraft. A brand name is more valuable than Twitch.

The biggest Lego sellers are the licensed products. Microsoft will undoubtedly partner with Disney (as an example) and sell Star Wars and Marvel Minecraft add ons. Make your own Iron Man suit, build a lightsaber, etc.

I stick with my 1970s Lego annology, Lego's resurgence has been powered by the kid's in the 70s and 80s who grew up with Lego introducing Lego to their children. Minecraft is big, but it's not that big. I know a lot of people who do not know what Minecraft is.

Perfect time to sell, 2 billion, more money than sense. I personally think the Minecraft shark is has been jumped long ago. Kids are a pretty fickle audience to pin your hopes on.

@patrickklepek: a lot of better developers are buy able for $2 billion. Not to mention the shit line up of exclusives Microsoft has developed in house recently shows that they need a new good developer not some win big lucky indie lottery winner developer. They were lucky to have developed Minecraft, they were lucky to have it become huge and far as I can see I'm not expecting much from them. I also can't see this ever becoming the modern day lego, I just think its hit its peak and its going to slow down.

I also can't understand why anyone would buy this for the new systems since its already out on the old ones.

Aren't brands always what matters? There are other livestreaming sites/services. But Twitch has a gaming mindshare. Sure, it started because of the tech, but I don't think that's the case now.

While it is impossible to fault someone for selling their company for two billion dollars, the way Notch went about it was especially shitty (and true to form).

It is being reported by Polygon that Notch himself approached Microsoft months ago about the deal, and that he went to them MONTHS ago to start negotiations....meaning that at the same time he was busy telling everyone that would listen how much he opposed Facebook's Oculus acquisition by pulling all support for Oculus, (and calling Facebook a creepy company) he was actively trying to sell Mojang to Microsoft for the same amount of money.

Are the PS4 and PS3 versions of minecraft going to be pulled off of PSN?

@jay_ray: You're right in the sense that Minecraft isn't as big as Lego, but it's because of the older crowd. Minecraft is way more popular than Lego with people under the age of 20 or so. Over that age, and you get to a large group of people that typically don't care about video games and don't know/care about Minecraft but instead grew up with Lego.

I was mainly disagreeing with the financial comparison, because this acquisition is so late, whereas in the 70s, Lego wasn't a household brand yet.

I really doubt it, especially since there is most likely an existing agreement between Mojang and Sony to have Minecraft on PSN. Microsoft cannot ignore that contract even if they wanted to.

Also it would be very very smart to keep Minecraft everywhere. I know a few people who've purchased Minecraft 2 or 3 times just because it's available. No reason to shut off a revenue source.

@geraltitude: Twitch has the support as it were, which isn't nominally different than a Brand but there's an enormous infrastructure as well that I don't think Minecraft has or requires. If someone bought From Software they'd be buying the people making it mostly not the games themselves, yes Dark Souls is popular but Miyazaki is probably a lot more important (hence why people are so interested in Bloodborne). Square having Eidos let them have a whole bunch of really solid diverse games that used existing IPs but were completely different than the previous games in the series and pretty much saved their last generation performance. Minecraft is just Minecraft, it's a name.

Well, Mojang had revenue of $316 million in 2013, more than double its revenue from 2012. Minecraft is actually the third best selling game of all time, beaten only by Tetris and Wii Sports. And then there`s merchendise. My local toy store doesnt have a single super mario toy, but an entire section dedicated to Minecraft. And that`s 5 years after it was released. They`re not losing money.

Minecraft is fine, but everything about it is mad generic. I'm probably out of touch (I only played Minecraft for a few weeks), but I have trouble seeing how this investment will be anywhere near worthwhile.

I'd rather just invest a very small fraction of the $2B into creating a new game/series that might have similar mechanics to Minecraft (different enough to try and avoid litigation), and hope that it would eventually win market share.

But Lego known was known in the 70s/80s to the younger demographic, just like Minecraft is now. And Microsoft (correctly or incorrectly) are betting in 20 years that Minecraft = Lego. This is a very long term acquisition not unlike Facebook buying Oculus though at least Minecraft actually makes money currently.

If we're to entertain the idea of a sale, it raises some big questions about the future. Minecraft just launched on PlayStation 4, and a Vita version is on the way. The mobile versions of Minecraft have been some of the most consistent sellers on every platform. Would Microsoft really consider pulling the plug on those versions? That's hard to imagine--it'd be throwing away money.

If it means undercutting the competition and taking the latest hot title and making it exclusive to their currently sort-of struggling console, what do you think, Pat?

I think you're right.

Brands and users ... Whatsapp wasn't sold for that much money because the app is that great or the brand that valuable ... it was sold because it has a shitton of users.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-09-08-amazon-gets-USD2-billion-in-credit

strange coincidence to borrow the same amount in the same week

@jay_ray: I don't think you are right. Minecaft is very much a video game, though pretty unique the way it's structured and how it has drawn people.

Still a game. Still likely have had its sales peak, not exactly set up for a sequel. Mojang is a video game company, they have made other products that have not been very popular. It is the video game equivalent of a one hit wonder, I don't mean to sound mean but the company will never produce another success like it. The stars were aligned. You can't plan and create a success like it with intent, not to talk down the creator - he made the game but the way it spread to become the giant it is was pure luck. Minecraft is not a franchise the way that lego is a franchise. Tie in products will not earn back 2bn dollars. The sale might very well happen, who knows, but it's not a good deal for the buyer. Like buying a used gold mine after it is half emptied, and for 5 times more than it has made.

If they would only want to buy Minecraft trademark, it would make a lot of sense for both sides, but whole Mojang? Will the developers just leave it and makeanother studio?

Well, if rumors are to be believed, Microsoft is indeed going in for the entire studio, but Notch is making damn sure that part of the deal is that everyone at Mojang is taken care of just as well if not better than when he owned it. While I can imagine that some people will leave simply because that's such an indie developer thing to do, I think a lot of people, including some key members, will stick around.

We just got done seeing how much crap can be slung by the Internet towards the game industry. And people have gotten annoying protective of Minecraft where trying to do some improvements will be met with rage. So I'm not surprised at all Notch wants to "get out" before Minecraft is more of an anchor than a buoy.

But it would have been nice if he could have sold it to the people in his company first.

Every year there are millions of new kids that will want to play Minecraft. And I think a lot of parents prefer to buy a creative game like Minecraft with endless amount of hours to be played instead of having to buy new violent video games all the time and more and more parents are probably getting aware of this as long as the game keeps being popular.

@tirion: Sure! But it will not be everlasting and it's now out on literally every platform.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-15-microsoft-buys-mojang-and-minecraft

https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by-microsoft/

"Xbox boss Phil Spencer vowed to continue to "make Minecraft available" across non-PC and Xbox platforms, including iOS, Android and PlayStation."

I cannot help but love this line:

"Of course, Microsoft can’t make decisions for other companies or predict the choices that they might make in the future"

That is some top quality corporate speak right there.

It's the clam before the storm (or when America wakes up). Really surprised to see this happen.