Microjang - The $2 Billion Minecraft Revelation

"Developer Mojang looks set to be sold to Microsoft for $2 billion dollars, but founder and Minecraft creator Markus Persson won't be staying."

These are the kind of headlines making news today, and likely leading till we eventually get the final deal or no deal announcement. And quite simply wow, under the hype of the colossal release of Destiny, which has just surpassed $500m in revenue since release… oh, all of 24 hours ago I might add. A little title called minecraft has managed to poke its indie head above and beyond the headlines of Destiny. Who said indie devs weren't big business! Minecraft is far from small, its one of the biggest franchises in gaming… in the world, period!

Bloomberg have revealed information, however, that suggests it was Persson who instigated talks with Microsoft, rather than the other way round, and that he plans to leave Mojang after the transition "bling bling". This is arguably the deal of the decade, and something I think Persson will be more than obliged to take, remembering he's already made big $$$ anyway and rightly so, with comments like this made via his twitter in December 2012..

"Anyway, my price is two billion dollars. Give me two billion dollars, and I'll endorse your crap."

Well, that's his price, and Microsoft obviously seem happy to meet it. Many will say this is simply Microsoft taking advantage of its wealth, and buying its exclusives, instead of creating them, this is actually not true entirely. Microsoft have recently revealed new 1st party studios SOTA (State of the Art), [FUN]ction Studios, Good Science, NP, and Platform Next. So its obviously working toward the right direction, and titles like quantum break, sunset overdrive, gears and halo… love them or hate them, Xbox is still a strong brand with exclusive reasons to own one. However, this news today should come as little surprise as Perssons has previously revealed to be struggling with the programmer's equivalent of writer's block, so maybe now is the time to sell! If minecraft has peaked, sell high while you can.

Minecraft is gaming gold, it is the dream come true of game developers, its simplistic style and truly open ended style of play has taken the world by storm, its gaming meets Lego in a way, but is it worth $2 billion? If you take its total earnings since day one, sure it probably is as a franchise, but its peaked. Could Microsoft have put this money into producing a homegrown IP that was fresh, something that would totally demand a reason to own an Xbox one. Minecraft already has a great player base on Microsoft systems.

What does this say for the future of indie games? Will Sony/Microsoft be focusing more and more on cheap, essentially free indies to create games, to then snatch them before they explode like minecraft? It sounds like great business, but what does this say about the mentality of them? Are they becoming less inclined to gamble on big AAA titles? Indies are great, but minecraft was huge due to its fresh unique appeal, its one in a million, I want an outright blockbuster! I honestly believe mojang is not worth the investment, I feel minecraft is a huge success, but I can't see it evolving all that far beyond what it is today. A new IP, a new halo sized franchise, to me, is worth investing in. Has minecraft peaked? Yes, probably! Can Microsoft push the franchise even higher, into movies and further merchandise…sure they will, but again, how far can it continue to grow? Maybe minecraft 2 was discussed, that'd be a pretty huge exclusive.

Let's put things into perspective, Destiny if exclusive, would be one serious console seller, its a future $billion franchise for sure. It had a budget of $500m, but you can be sure its worth more, way more than that if Microsoft were to buy them "never btw". But its a good way to bring up the fact they could use this $2billion and create 4 Destiny sized exclusives, this is a really simplistic way to look at things, in reality just one new huge exclusive IP is big news…. I think that'd literally win the console war. It baffles me how Microsoft have displayed its seemingly limitless wealth today with this news, when it just seems so damn simple that investing said money into new ip's seems like a better deal for Xbox owners! Is minecraft worth 4 killer ip's? No… not at all! EA purchased Bioware for $800 million, now imagine that as your chosen consoles exclusive… from memory, GTA V had a budget originally of around $100m! Minecraft wont be buying rockstar anytime soon, but imagine an ip like gta as exclusive!

But let's not let this take away from minecraft's fantastic success, but as an investment for the future I think you have to take a step away from purely their gaming division. I feel this deal was to expand their influence in the market and to in some extent further control. The Lego minecraft deal going on, When you take merchandising and tv/movie royalties into account it just might be worth it, as a totally new business division, its now bigger than just the game, and Microsoft want that! More power to them, if you can… you will. Microsoft are bigger than just gaming, its business, this is common practice in business. Also, it just might be that mojang have something big in the making, something Microsoft feel is hot enough to spend big on now for exclusive rights to. And I'd expect minecraft to stay multi plat, its almost a joke and something Microsoft will absolutely love seeing future mojang titles selling on Sony consoles! Minecraft 2 however, I'd bank on that as exclusive.

Oh, its worth noting Minecraft has sold 54 million copies since its release, with the Xbox 360 being the most popular format, having now beaten the PC version. That's a console seller! But if it has peaked, is it going to continue to be?