According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft may be nearing a deal to buy Mojang AB, makers of the Minecraft video game franchise. If the deal proves legitimate, it would value Mojang at more than $2 billion, and could be signed as early as this week. So far, neither Mojang AB or Microsoft have commented publicly on the situation.
In the past, Mojang - and Notch, in particular - have expressed no desire to be involved with other major corporations, or sell the Minecraft franchise. Mojang has often bucked the trend of the video game industry, refusing to give in on principle to a number of standard practices.
At this time, there is no clear confirmation or information about the alleged deal. Keep your eyes peeled - this is going to be a very interesting week!
Minecraft can not be taken hold by these people, Microsoft charge people to put patches onto their games, For example, TF2 that's why the Xbox version of TF2 is basically a vanilla version of the PC game, They don't even have hats.
Microsoft also would probably switch to yearly updates, and every other one would suck
They would stop giving out the Server Files
They would probably also completely recode it in C++ or C# Because Java isn't good enough
FASA did MechWarrior. Aces did the long running (and now dead) Flight Simulator franchise. Both were Big Deals in their day
Oh right, MS is in the process of making Skype every worse. The latest versions appear to be moving towards Windows 8 Metro only.
EA bought and closed Westwood Studios, not MS. EA is far worse than MS.
Those were just ones MS bought, they have closed many of their own game studios when looking for cuts. Considering the repeat number of failures and layoffs MS has had, recently being Win 8 and the acquisition of Nokia resulting in >18k layoffs; we could be in trouble if Win 9 pulls an 8.
whats so bad about windows (except 4 8)?
i heard 9 might be coming soon! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Because Microsoft's idea of something like Shadowrun was "MAEK IT A SHOOTAR!!! MAEK IT LIEK HALOOO!"
Rare was forced to make Kinect games. However, their last Banjo and Kazooie game was...um, horrible.
I wish people would stop with this "port to C#/C++" crap. Doing that will not guaruntee ANY improvement in performance. In fact the only thing it'll do is make the current means of modding completely impossible.
Aces made the Flight Simulator series.
That, I would agree with you.
Most people hate Fable, but some people like it.
Ensemble was awesome, but they were killed off after Halo Wars.
Fasa made the Mechwarrior series and the Shadowgun series (even though that series has been recently revived as Shadowrun: Returns, by an indie studio that has the devs of FASA.
So you're saying that Linux, which in you have to use the command line a whole lot more is better than Windows? I have a feeling that you've never actually used Linux because you're saying "Linux is brilliant", but Linux itself is not an operating system. You can't download "Linux" and run it, you have to download a Linux distro. Some Linux distros are quite different from others and even someone who liked using Linux in general would not say "Linux is brilliant" because some distros are crap.
Can you tell me why you think Linux is so much superior to Windows? Besides being free there are really no upsides.
I think you may be hanging out with closed-minded people who can't get past the face that Microsoft changed the start screen. Windows 8 isn't much different from Windows 7; the only change in it that I can really see people disliking (Unless you like having your computer boot and shut down slow?) is the start menu. Anyone who dislikes it because of that has either never tried it and thinks it's a much bigger deal than it is or has only tried it for a very short time. Tip: you can right click the bottom left corner of the screen to bring up something that resembles the start menu in Windows 7 and older.
You say that like recoding a game from scratch in a different language is easy. Microsoft wouldn't buy Mojang if they wanted to completely recode Minecraft. They'd just make their own game resembling Minecraft in C#.
Except everything you have listed thus far was under Bonehead Steve Ballmer, who made it a point to ask the creative teams "What can you do to make me more money?" Ballmer was a corporate man with absolutely no vision and zero clue as to how to run a tech company. Fasa, Aces and Ensemble were all shut down during his watch, after he had drained them. Rare has actually been faring pretty well since they were bought(I wish they would make a new Battletoads). Simple fact of the matter is that we cannot judge the new guys based on what the old guys have done. From what I have read, Notch was the initiator, not Microsoft. But it was after Ballmer had left and Spencer was put in charge of Xbox and Microsoft Game Studios. This would also mark the largest acquisition MS has done regarding games both in scope and cost. Would you gamble with $2 billion by mucking up the formula? Again, I know Ballmer would, but I don't get that feeling with Nadella. Seems too open to playing nice with others. As for the layoffs, it is an unfortunate effect of mergers, I do question why in Nokia's case, as the usual reason given is due to job overlap. But if I understand why, I could run my own multinational multi-billion dollar tech company
Uh Windows hasn't been DOS based since ME. They had been trying to do away with DOS after 98. XP was the first home user oriented version that did not run on or concurrent to DOS
Screw with anything these people love, and you will have an angry mob after you for it. You think this whole mob mentality on other things is bad? You not only could have them likely, screwing over the mobile platform but rival platform Sony as well. All just so they can have more control, over the game and likely locked to their hardware? Would seem logical to do, but that would also get the ire of fans across the globe. Likely if anything more exclusive DLC things, if this ever came to fruition at all.