Offhand: doesn't that sound like something from an 80ies barbarian movie?
OLD WITCH: "You have fragmented the thread! You will all die!"
SORCERER: "There is but one hope - you must travel through the broken lands to seek the ARC, and take it to the valley of the tall tree where the threads can be reunited!"
While Mojang may have taken a relatively hands off approach to modded servers of questionable legality (Spigot, Bukkit, MinecraftForge), I have a feeling Microsoft may not be so benign.
I'm not one to usually throw FUD, but in this case I feel it's most likely warranted.
I predict an unhappy ending to the unofficial mod community, with it being replaced by an official plugin API. It's been promised for years, perhaps it will actually come this time...
Well, I vowed never to give a cent to Microsoft again, so there goes any Minecraft upgrade I've considered. Not that they will be aching, but nonetheless...
(edit: thanks for the downvotes, I'll stand by it, though)
Skype seems to have gone from a rising trend to a falling one (now at 65% of the 2011 "interest") following the MS acquisition. Yes, that's partially with WebRTC, Hangouts and other outside influences but MS's actions (further centralising control) put many people off who wouldn't be simply put off by the name.
How much of a role do you really think that plays in Skype? Honestly, Skype is so widespread that I'd bet the average Skype user (a) doesn't realize it's owned by Microsoft and (b) hasn't really cared about the changes Microsoft made post-acquisition. I could be wrong, but from my perspective it seems that the average Skype user really doesn't think about these things.
Talking about Skype... I was a long time MSN user and ditched it and they forced every MSN user to migrate to Skype. No, I don't miss it at all. What I've done was taking my friends with me to use XMPP.
> Microsoft’s investments in cloud and mobile technologies will enable “Minecraft” players to benefit from richer and faster worlds, more powerful development tools, and more opportunities to connect across the “Minecraft” community.
Sounds like they intend to use it as a killer app for microsoft phones.
Sounds like they're either going to port it to C# or add Java development to Visual Studio? Though I doubt the latter is the case... Given the history of Java and Microsoft...
What it sounds like is that they're going to start properly endorsing the modding community, something Mojang failed to realize is absolutely critical to minecraft.
Interesting, I never really gave it much thought. I always wanted a Java plugin for Visual Studio personally. Oh well. I guess IntelliJ is good enough. I guess it makes sense, if I remember correctly some of their download managers use Java themselves, or used to.
Pretty sure the every version outside of PC is not Java, so there is already an existing minecraft codebase that could potentially be ported to WP (Xbox version seems mostly likely for porting since it will already be using directx for rendering).
Free software's purpose is not to kill someone, but to give users the freedom to use, share, understand and improve software.
Something Microsoft can not offer.
It is a very specific game that caters to an almost abandoned niche : Minecraft is a sandbox.
Unlike most other games where you either have a story driven experience, or a match focused one, Minecraft gives you a sandbox and let you build things in it. You can pretty much have an infinite game length that way.
It is no wonder that it has a lot of success with kids.
haha, that's not a bad comparison !
Lego with an infinite number of blocks. Well, not infinite, only limited by your your resource grinding ability, at least if you play in adventure mode (probably the weakest part of the game btw).
Minecraft is actually extremely profitable, though. It's rumored that Notch already has a personal income in the realm of $100M/year derived from real revenue, not funding. This is very, very different from, say, Snapchat.
From what I can tell they still depend almost entirely on Minecraft, which, if I've followed gaming correctly, has as many registered players as WoW but pay no recurring subscription fee. Rough calculations seem to indicate MS are going to have to double year on year profitability for ~4-5 years to break even.
The interesting aspect of the purchase is the mindshare. I have kids in elementary and middle school and as far as I can tell, all their friends play it. When my kids went as Steve and a pig (from minecraft) for Halloween last year, they were drawing shouts nonstop from all the kids. Most parents had no idea.
How you turn that mindshare into money is math I don't understand.
I never heard of this game, but a quick search shows it's an 80s looking video game with very basic graphics (maybe there's another game with the same name?). Anyway, I can't understand what could possibly justify that price.
Try Google'in it for half a second and come up with 10 million hits. Of course its not the game they're buying; its those millions of enthusiasts' attention and buying power.
> Microsoft plans to continue to make “Minecraft” available across all the platforms on which it is available today: PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and PlayStation.
While they say it will be available across all of the platforms available today, noticeably absent in the enumerated list are OSX and Linux.
I dont see any reason why Microsoft would like to share Minecraft with Apple unless they will test the game, new revenue models and will be able to deliver product that after release to IOS will bring more pros than cons.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadOffhand: doesn't that sound like something from an 80ies barbarian movie?
OLD WITCH: "You have fragmented the thread! You will all die!"
SORCERER: "There is but one hope - you must travel through the broken lands to seek the ARC, and take it to the valley of the tall tree where the threads can be reunited!"
BEASTMASTER: "UUUURRRRRGGGHHHHH"
To derail your threads, to see their context driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their moderators!
I'm not one to usually throw FUD, but in this case I feel it's most likely warranted.
I predict an unhappy ending to the unofficial mod community, with it being replaced by an official plugin API. It's been promised for years, perhaps it will actually come this time...
(edit: thanks for the downvotes, I'll stand by it, though)
http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=skype
Skype seems to have gone from a rising trend to a falling one (now at 65% of the 2011 "interest") following the MS acquisition. Yes, that's partially with WebRTC, Hangouts and other outside influences but MS's actions (further centralising control) put many people off who wouldn't be simply put off by the name.
Sounds like they intend to use it as a killer app for microsoft phones.
Most of Windows Phones are rather smallish and Windows Surface is totally wrong product with their OS and limitations.
And I really hope he's making a lot of his employees rich in the process.
I'd love to be proven wrong though.
And it's not a big jump from having to make C# version anycase to moving the main development to that port.
And Microsoft is still holding on what will come next after XNA for game development in a managed context on Windows and beyond AFAIK.
I don't doubt something will succeed the current version of Minecraft but Microsoft has all the cards, it's up to them to lose it.
For those that don't know, Minetest is a free software Minecraft-like game written in C++ and Lua.
Interested and looking for a server to play on? Try the LibrePlanet server: http://games.libreplanet.org/minetest/
This is unbelievable to me. Anyone have stats for other games to compare with? Or does the constantly-developing nature of the game set it apart?
The interesting aspect of the purchase is the mindshare. I have kids in elementary and middle school and as far as I can tell, all their friends play it. When my kids went as Steve and a pig (from minecraft) for Halloween last year, they were drawing shouts nonstop from all the kids. Most parents had no idea.
How you turn that mindshare into money is math I don't understand.
WhatsApp was pricey, but that was driven by defensive strategy rather then pure financials.
While they say it will be available across all of the platforms available today, noticeably absent in the enumerated list are OSX and Linux.