Microsoft Corp is to acquire the maker of the hit game Minecraft for US$2.5 billion as the company continues to invest in its Xbox gaming platform and looks to grab attention on mobile devices.
The technology company said it is to buy Stockholm-based game maker Mojang in a deal expected to close later this year.
Minecraft, which lets users build in and explore a Lego-like virtual multiplayer world, has been downloaded 100 million times on PC alone since its launch in 2009. It is the most popular online game on Xbox, and the top paid app for Apple Inc’s iOS and Google Inc’s Android operating system in the US.
Photo: AFP
Microsoft said it will to continue to make Minecraft available across all the platforms on which it is available today: PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and PlayStation.
“Minecraft is more than a great game franchise: It is an open-world platform, driven by a vibrant community we care deeply about, and rich with new opportunities for that community and for Microsoft,” Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said.
Microsoft expects the acquisition to break even in fiscal 2015.
In a blog post, Mojang said its founders, Markus Persson, known as “Notch,” Carl Manneh and Jakob Porser are leaving the company.
Nadella has made mobile devices and Internet services priorities for Microsoft as its traditional businesses — Windows and Office software installed on desktops — slow down or decline.
“We believe the acquisition of the ubiquitous Minecraft game strategically makes sense as Microsoft looks for ways to drive users toward its nascent mobile hardware business, where it can leverage and cross-sell a wide range of its higher-margin software (eg, Office 365, Windows),” FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives said in a client note.
However, the founders of Mojang are not staying with Microsoft. That could raise questions about Mojang’s ability to create another big hit.
“It certainly seems like the founders of Minecraft didn’t want to continue forward,” Gartner analyst Brian Blau said. “It was something too big for them. Minecraft is best in the hands of somebody who can take it in the direction it needs to go for the user.”
Now, it will be Microsoft’s job to keep Minecraft’s loyal fan base happy. It is something raised any time big, established corporations buy little, much-loved independent companies. It happened when Facebook Inc bought photo-sharing app Instagram in 2012 and more recently when Amazon.com Inc agreed to buy Twitch, the online network that lets people watch live and recorded footage of others playing video games.
“Change is scary and this is a big change for all of us. It’s going to be good though. Everything is going to be OK,” Owen Hill, Mojang’s “chief word officer,” wrote in a blog post on Monday.
“Minecraft will continue to evolve, just like it has since the start of development. We don’t know specific plans for Minecraft future yet, but we do know that everyone involved wants the community to grow and become even more amazing than it’s ever been,” he wrote.
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