Right after Apple announced that it made a bunch of cash last week, Microsoft has revealed that it’s spending a sizable amount of dough.
Microsoft will buy Mojang, developer of "Minecraft," for $2.5 billion. The Mojang team will join Microsoft Studios, the division of Microsoft responsible for games like "Halo" and "Fable." The deal is subject to regulatory review and is expected to close in late 2014.
So what about Minecraft? Microsoft says that it plans to continue offering the hugely popular game on all of the platforms that it’s currently available on, including PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and PlayStation. Mojang says that Minecraft will continue to evolve but that it doesn’t know of any specifics of Microsoft’s plans.
Looking at Mojang, the team has confirmed that founders Notch, Carl and Jakob are all leaving. Details on their future plans haven’t been revealed.
This Minecraft buy is definitely an interesting move for Microsoft, and right now it’s unclear what the folks in Redmond plan to do with Mojang and Minecraft in the future. Considering how huge Minecraft is, though, I’m sure that Microsoft will continue to update and support the game for quite a while. What will be interesting is seeing what the game looks like going forward and how players will react to the departure of Notch and other Mojang founders.
Have you ever played Minecraft? What do you think of Microsoft’s purchase and Notch’s departure from Mojang?
UPDATE: Mojang founder Notch has penned a blog post that touches on his recent history with Minecraft and his decision to leave the company. He says that as soon as the Microsoft deal closes, he plans to go back to working on “small web experiments.” He ends the post by saying “It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.”
You can read the full post right here.
