Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

online.wsj.com

71–80 of 273 posts

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#71

I don't get it. Mojang already made "all the money" from selling minecraft and are largely maintaining it now. I haven't heard if they even have any new games on the way? The space one was cancelled. What exactly is MS possibly getting that could be worth $2B?

Nextgen Minecraft could be a XboxOne exclusive maybe as a launch title with whatever VR/AR device MS is supposedly working on. So, I could buy the Oculus that works only on a super-powered gaming PC that costs more than I make in a month, or the Sony Morpheus product which I'm sure will be great, but Sony won't have Minecraft, they'll have Playstation Home II. MS will have Minecraft. Which one will kids buy? I'm guessing the system with Minecraft. This all could be as soon as next xmas or even 2Q 2015.

Even if we ignore the VR/AR stuff, Minecraft with Kinect would be loads of fun. The Kinect's killer app may not be been dancing games. It could be world-building games. Imagine lifting your hand to move a brick and flicking your wrist to toss it.

...and thats on top of revenue MS would make on more traditional Minecraft monetizations. Look at how Disney is re-invigorating the Star Wars IP. Suddenly new movies and games are coming out. We're finally getting a third Battlefront and upcoming movies that seem under the aegis of more... competent creators than the recent prequels (Sorry George!). People are more excited than ever about an IP, that frankly, has been treading water for the last 20 years. MS could do something like that to Minecraft, which always seemed more than a bit under-commercialized.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#72

What an odd rumor that I hope is just that. Notch has a history of bashing Microsoft and MS's efforts to lock down Windows and Microsoft has a pretty bad track record when it comes to acquisitions. They seem to kinda squash anything interesting out of them to try to force that acquisition into helping the MS/Xbox brand. If anyone buys Mojang I really hope it's either Valve or a company much like it. They seem much mo…

I always felt it was odd that Notch bashed Windows 8 so publicly for the store, yet happily sells on iOS, XBox, PS3, etc.

Very few people in the history of humanity have put their money where their mouth is.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#73
post #62
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sequels? Movie rights? Merchandising? More platforms? But yeah, $2B sounds disproportionate.

I see multiple kids wearing creeper shirts every day as I walk my daughter to elementary school.

Like for Angry Birds- what percentage of these are china town knockoffs?

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then he changed his mind. https://twitter.com/notch/status/500214489136910336

Not to split hairs, but that's really not how I'd characterize that tweet. He only says he's done being mad about it.

It is clear if you read the entire conversation.

Markus Persson ✔ @notch Follow

@bar10dr that's up to the minecraft dev team

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#76
post #11

Wow, good for Mojang and notch. I kind of fear that this is just going to be another Rare though. All the talent will move on after the handcuffs are off and the popular franchises will just languish. edit: Also I hope this wouldn't kill any momentum to get Minecraft on the Occulus Rift. Something tells me MS wouldn't be so happy to have a first class game experience on a competitor's hardware/platform.

Some modders are still working on porting their Minecrift mod, to the 1.7.10 version of Minecraft. The latest is still beta, but it works.

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=142&t=17489&p=12...

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#77

I don't get it. Mojang already made "all the money" from selling minecraft and are largely maintaining it now. I haven't heard if they even have any new games on the way? The space one was cancelled. What exactly is MS possibly getting that could be worth $2B?

Nextgen Minecraft could be a XboxOne exclusive maybe as a launch title with whatever VR/AR device MS is supposedly working on. So, I could buy the Oculus that works only on a super-powered gaming PC that costs more than I make in a month, or the Sony Morpheus product which I'm sure will be great, but Sony won't have Minecraft, they'll have Playstation Home II. MS will have Minecraft. Which one will kids buy? I'm gues…

Minecraft came out on the PS4 last week.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#79
post #61

I don't get it. Mojang already made "all the money" from selling minecraft and are largely maintaining it now. I haven't heard if they even have any new games on the way? The space one was cancelled. What exactly is MS possibly getting that could be worth $2B?

They still sell around 10k PC copies per day … It’s not growing, but it’s also not exactly shrinking (I remember obsessively checking those stats years ago and they always hovered around 10k), and hasn’t for years. Minecraft might be a different beast than other video games, truly more like Lego than video games actually. There are always new young people you can sell the game to and with constant maintenance for fre…

I like this strategy a lot.

When you release something that, on day one, already has 'dated' graphics, you don't have to worry about keeping up with the latest graphics cards or poly-counts or anything of the sort. Its just about the game. Like Legos there are countless others, The Game of Life (Milton Bradley, not Conway) has been around since the 1800's. The beauty of this is that you've never completely saturated since kids are coming of age every day and growing into the game.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#80
post #78

Great! I'm going start writing a Clippy mod for Minecraft so I'm zero-day prepared for the purchase. In this mod, Clippy runs around dropping random notes that give players worthless hints about how to play the game. "Did you know . . .!"

That stopped being funny 10 years ago.

Microsoft will also close the game for any modding so...

Post reply on HN