Microsoft splurges 2½ INSTAGRAMS buying Minecraft maker Mojang Having closed down its own lesser gaming operations, Microsoft is spending $2.5bn on buying one with a big punch – Minecraft maker Mojang. Loss-making Minecraft will break even in 2015, Microsoft said in a statement. The deal is expected to close late this year. Microsoft is doing more than buying a leading and popular game …
Well... Mojang made $139mil *profit* in 2013. They also paid Notch's licensing shell another $130mil that year. If MS bought out the IP as well as the company they get both chunks as profit - $269mil annual profit starts to make this look more like a typical purchase, albeit with a tonne more risk than most.
Luckily I never saw the appeal of Minecraft, too much like the day job, so my interest ends there ;)
> Luckily I never saw the appeal of Minecraft, too much like the day job, so my interest ends there ;)
Assuming you are an adult, your head is probably screwed on right! From what I've observed, it's immensely popular in 6-10 year olds,competing neck to neck against star wars franchise (but not so much in 13+ kids).
For $20, it's a major return on investment for parents who can bribe their kids to kids do anything for another hour of minecraft.
"If MS shift it to .NET and make a free plugin for VS Express, they have just captured pretty much the entire next generation of application developers."
That would imply that the next generation of developers are currently owned by Oracle, since Minecraft is all in Java. Oracle might like to think that, but I don't believe it is a fair statement.
It also implies that a plug-in API would be easy. It might, but all the existing mods are version-specific and Mojang have never published an API.
It also implies that forcing the entire Minecraft community onto Windows isn't going to fragment that community. It certainly will.
To cut a long story short, I find it hard to see how MS-Minecraft can be any more profitable than Mojang-Minecraft, and we know that the latter struggles. I think MS paid about $2.5 billion too much.
Two possibilities:
- there was a huge party involving investment bankers, MS execs and a LOT of coke and booze. It lasted a few days when people were tiring of strippers and smoking bank notes, MS brought Mojang
- MS haven't purchased Mojang - the US$2.5b is a bribe to release a version for Surface.
My money's on the first option.
My son and I play a good bit of Minecraft, so here is my $.02.
The reason Minecraft Is attractive is because it is a whole platform, not just a game. I see a couple of possibilities:
1) They wanted the social network. The built-in chat system is just as primitive as the blocky graphics, but to teens and tweeners it is like IRC for the next generation. The chat users alone are certainly worth more than, say, ICQ. From what I understand, it is the most popular Xbox game. And of course, look at how popular Minecraft-related videos are on YouTube! One of these youtubers even got a cameo in the Lego movie (the SPACESHIP!!!!! guy)
2) Minecraft has a one time charge for a username, and the game & most server content are free for the rest of eternity. This means that people who play a different game for awhile still come back to Minecraft. As long as MS doesn't screw it up, they will be able to control the content of the default "portal" for millions of users.
3) Less certain, but possible: Minecraft is a platform to add on paid content (such as the new Realms feature). I'm sure they see some kind of licensing revenue from the Minecraft server community too though they need to be careful not to screw this up. Nothing kills a project's momentum more than having to deal with stupid licensing issues. Admittedly, licensing is the basis of Microsoft's success and the only area where Microsoft is truly the most innovative company in the world.
4) There is a whole generation of new programmers who are learning how to program using Java and dev tools other than Visual Studio. Longer term, they may be able to get a lot of developers to start using the M$ tools by default.
Mark
p.s. if Microsoft can end the worst part of Minecraft culture -- how people put mods and resource packs on site like adf.ly -- I will be ecstatic. These micropayment sites with their gazllion fake "Download" links are unbelievably annoying.
They bought Skype already, which used to do Text Chat fine!
Though they are messing up Skype
QQ is a good alternative From the #2 Social Network company you never heard of.
If the aim is a whole platform, it's daft. Actually this is just bonkers.
How many companies have tried to build a persistent online world that builds communities and has interest outside of the hardcore gaming community? How many companies successfully support 100m users? Clearly there is service knowledge and technical understanding that is of value to any company wanting to scale online environments. Add in a large user-base and it makes some sense.
From another perspective, this sort of success isn't something you can produce to order. Notch was lucky to hit the right combination of elements and skilled enough to respond to the early community to fine tune the recipe. Having got there, Minecraft has successfully seen off many imitators. At the same time it's been clear for a while that Notch himself has been far less comfortable managing the expectations of a global audience, so his exit is understandable.
My understanding is that a lot of the costs for Mojang are in maintaining a global server infrastructure, so you could imagine that being brought under Microsoft's wing could result in savings and hence more easily reached profits.
You only pay for minecraft once - so I don't see how there will ever be a "revenue" stream unless they start charging for the regular releases.
Everyone and everything in the community knows the reasons it's bee so succesful.
The initial idea is fun - and gets you started.
However what keeps you playing is the modding community (who monetise their mods via ad revenue) you can pretty much do anything, visit alien worlds, radically change the crafting engines so you're a stone man chipping away at stones, build giant factories and nuclear reactors. So on and so forth. The main game is cute - but it generally doesn't keep you for a huge amount of time.
Then along side the modding community are the modpack maintainers who save normal people the efforts of figuring out and packaging muliple mods for solo and server play.
The next major element is the youtube and twitch community who make their livings out of airing the game (yogcast being the most obvious group there)
Then there's a the game servers - originally minecraft didn't have any real "game states" you just did what you wanted in a sandbox and that was about it. It was up to the players to make their own fun. It didn't take long for people to start making their own games, the arena game where you have a 1 deep floor and a everyone has a pick axe and tries to be the last guy standing, to survival games, jumping games, races and all kinds of other games.
Many of those game servers of course are massive massive undertakings financing through server membership systems.
Then there are the companies that sell and maintain minecraft servers and surrounding services (the ability to easily manage and upgrade servers with mod packs for the everyday human being)
Here's the thing, minecraft is minecraft because for the most part the players did all the work, Notch & Co ujst gave us a sandbox, the users made it a thing.
So - how does all that user generated, user financed and user owned content and architecture continue under Microsoft?
Pretty sure I saw somewhere that Notch had personally put away $100mil from Minecraft, so I assume much of the "potential profit" part of the revenue was distributed to the founders and/or employees via various mechanisms.
As you might expect for a privately owned company.
Indeed I'm pretty sure Mojang made fuck loads of profit. Given Notch basically managed to sink something like $10,000,000 in the early days direct into pocket when he was just running a log in service at (amazon web services?) and he turned over hundreds of millions a year since. Though good for him and his lot, he made a one shot wonder we all loved, sunk the cash, flogged it to a retarded corporation to quadrouple his already mammoth profits and leaves the rest of us thinking "well minecraft was nice, but hey - space engineers looks like fun, and fuck whatever microsoft does we still have 1.7.2 though I'm sure MS lawyers will nuke the entire scene and destroy the game 100% but well - TOG looks interesting"
As to cash given it was a tiny dev house they'd sold 100,000,000 copies given early beta's were £10 so lets' just imagine most people bought at that, that's 1 billion pounds. For what 3 developers? And that's just the direct cash paid to mojang, not counting the stratospheric size of the community (I was paying £20 for a server for 25 users - a month, and I'm baby fry - though I'll be shutting that down, too small to even want to ponder the shit MS are gonna spawn)
I'm an adult and a big Minecraft fan myself. What I like most about the game is that it doesn't force you into doing stuff you don't want; you can play the game how you want to play it. Just want to build houses and other stuff? You can; there's Creative mode. And did you know Minecraft even provides options to build complex digital circuitry (redstone circuits)?
Or do you want to play the (Survival) game; can do that too... With or without cheats; it's all up to you.
THAT's a true open world for you in my book.
But this is still a dangerous move. Mojang has recently "changed" their EULA. Well, not really but they started laying down several rules which they feel should apply to server operators and players alike.
Unfortunately they've been very vague about 'm, not to mention that their whole legal stance is kinda shakey. You see; you can download patched Minecraft server software (which allows the use of plugins). This gets you the Minecraft server while you wouldn't even come near this EULA thingie (its a completely different website).
The fun part? That kind of distribution (modified server code) is in direct violation against their EULA.
One of the largest (?) or at least a very popular "Minecraft modding site" has been Bukkit. You can find them here.
Guess what? Those new EULA changes, or the vagueness around it if you will, didn't go well there either. Dozens of staff members and developers got so fed up with it that they decided to leave the Bukkit project.
Just to put this into perspective: I think its fair to say that 90% of all the existing Minecraft servers out there uses Bukkit. And that project is now shaking on its very foundations. I also think its fair to say that the thing which makes Minecraft so popular are the servers.
See the problem here?
Yet amidst all that turmoil, all that bickering and people actually giving up on Minecraft... Here comes Microsoft and coughs up a major amount of cash for a company which, according to them, was already writing up losses.
And now we have Microsoft which is a direct competitor for Java (which is what Minecraft was build on), is a company which many people distrust when it comes to doing what their audience wants or expects of them (look at Windows Vista and Windows 8, or even look at Visual Studio 2012) and giving the fact that all Microsoft seems to be focussing at right now is mobile...
I for one hope this won't be the end for Minecraft on the PC as we know it. Even though this process could already have been set into motion...
Many people complain about the decreased performance in the latest version of the game (1.8). And here we suddenly learn that Microsoft has been helping Mojang for a considerable amount of time already. Could one be a result of the other?
Indeed for years there's been a lot of fear about Mojang's EULA and "user generated content" (from mods to youtube to servers to services) and to think Microsoft wont bring a big stick to the whole affair is to think that Putin is a loving Benefactor to all of the Russian speaking people of the world.
The flashbacks to the dotcom bubble have been getting stronger lately, and I thought they had peaked with the WhatsApp purchase by Facebook. But this just sounds like some investment banker whispered in Microsoft's ear that they need a cloud-enabled gamification platform combined with a social media property with synergies in the pre-Millenial market demographic to monetize revenue streams via integrated immersive infotainment apps. Oh, and Big Data.
I'm not saying it would be great to wipe out all this stock market value, after all, my retirement's in there too...but it might shock people back into focusing on fundamentals like actually producing a product or software that isn't driven by fads in mobile, social media, an app ecosystem, or The Cloud. I do think that deals like this, the WhatsApp deal,. the Instagram deal, Snapchat turning down a $3B buyout by Google, and the Twitter craziness are going to be remembered as the end of Bubble 2.0.
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From this point of view, this is a game has some similarities with Flight Simulator - which MS shutdown -, although aimed at a different public. It's a game you start but or get addicted or leave after a while. Fans will use and mod it a lot - because you have whole world to play with(in).
The difference is that FS was aimed at a more adult customer - which could also spend more, look at the still existing market for FS add-ons and their prices (often justified by their quality) - while Minecraft is aimed at a younger user which may not spend as much - MS may try the DLC road with relatively low-priced in-app purchases, but if aimed at kids it may not bring much revenues.
And rememeber, when they tried to turn Flight Simulator into "Flight", it was a spectacular failure. The most long running game franchise was turned into a new product that was shutdown six months later (while Flight Simulator still survives as Lockheed Martin Prepar3D, but at far higher price and a different license).
I wonder who will be in charge of Minecraft at MS.... the guy who destroyed Flight Simulator?
I'm a huge fan of Minecraft. My kids got me started and since it's cheaper that a set of Lego I took to it like a kid in a candy store.
In a way I'm a bit disappointed in Notch for bailing, but at the same time I can understand, Minecraft is HUGE!
Fortunately, from what I've read so far, Microsoft isn't wanting to change the actual game or it's community. But there are some interesting things that it could do with it.
First, from what I understand, Notch didn't want to do a WinPhone port due to the small user base, so that will probably be one of the first area's that MS concentrates on, and this will be good because it will translate into a port for Windows 8 RT meaning an even larger base. But at the same time, due to the underlying structure and coding language behind WinPhone and RT a full recode of Minecraft may be necessary, migrating it away from the memory hog that Java is.
If there is a move away from Java and into another language we may see an improvement in memory resources and a smoother experience on older slower machines.
Lastly, MICROSOFT BETTER NOT RUIN THIS AWESOME GAME!!!
"If there is a move away from Java and into another language we may see an improvement in memory resources and a smoother experience on older slower machines."
Side effect is the likely dropping of non-Windows support. I can't see MS rewriting it in another language and keeping OpenGL involved, let alone popping out non-Windows binaries.
Maybe an OSX version would survive, but would be written by a totally different team, released in years the Windows one is not, and have a completely different feature set.
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> Be fair - Skype was always crap.
Crap compared to what exactly?
As a long time Microsoft loather, I have to give them credit for keeping Skype alive. It is still the only screen sharing software that is usable at all... even WebEx is a total fail these days. GoToMeeting never worked, Lync's sipe plugin for Pidgin is also useless, etc, etc, etc.
Kind of ironic that Microsoft is the company making Linux screen sharing possible.
It is still the only screen sharing software that is usable at all...
Bridgit isn't bad. We find it generally reliable and usable even for widely-distributed teams (we have one daily call with participants from SE Asia, Europe, and N America) - latency is quite good.
I'm on another team that uses Skype similarly, and we see roughly similar performance. Bridgit has more features, so if those are useful to you it's probably worth the additional expense.
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