“Today is an incredibly exciting day for our team,” Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft’s Xbox division wrote today. Minecraft, and developers Mojang, are now officially a part of Microsoft. The $2.5 Billion sale was made official this morning in what is one of the largest ever monetary transactions for an indie game studio. That’s a lot of Free-to-Play clicks!
Spencer outlined how Minecraft will continue go forward, including bringing back the popular MINECON fan convention and supporting the releases on other, non-Microsoft devices (Playstation, iOS, Mac).
Not only are the games still selling at high numbers, but the intellectual property is incredibly popular, spawning toys, clothing, books, and an upcoming movie. Just earlier this month, Doctor Who joined the Minecraft universe as special DLC. This will undoubtedly grow, as Microsoft’s licensing arm is far bigger and more experienced than Mojang’s.
As expected, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson will resign as head of Mojang, moving on to pursue smaller ventures and get back to coding. “I’ve become a symbol. I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter,” he wrote on his personal blog.
Minecraft 2, anyone? Minecrosoftcraft? Minecraftsoft?
Okay, I’ll stop.
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