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Microsoft, Unity and Minecraft

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by VicToMeyeZR, Sep 20, 2014.

  1. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    Is it just me, or is Microsoft buying up a lot of game and game engine assets as of late? Lastg one of course is Majong for $2.5b, which I can't see will be a profit purchase, (run the numbers) unless of course there is more to this story. Like they are going to buy a real game engine platform (like say, Unity) and rebuild Minecraft into Unity. Thoughts?
     
  2. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    I am pretty sure their first order of business will be to convert Minecraft into a Native code system. (least that's what I would do)
     
  3. Ryiah

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    Microsoft does not care about Minecraft itself. They care about the community surrounding it. Switching Minecraft to a native code system without implementing proper modding support would destroy a good portion of that community.

    I know one of the modding communities, called Feed the Beast, has already mentioned going to an alternative game if something were to change in Minecraft preventing modding.

    Probably one of the worst things Microsoft could do is interfere with Minecraft's development.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2014
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  4. Taschenschieber

    Taschenschieber

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    Why did Microsoft buy Minecraft?

    Because Notch was looking for a seller and MS was already cooperating with Mojang. I doubt they have any long-term strategic goals about Minecraft, and I still believe the impact of the whole deal is blown way out of proportion on the internet. Which is unsurprising, because it is the internet.

    Also, I assume Microsoft does not need Unity (or Unreal or any other external engine) to port a very simple (tech-wise) game like Minecraft. Notch managed to do it without Unity, Microsoft certainly will. Or would, because Minecraft does not belong to Microsoft. Mojang does.
     
  5. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    You think a HUGE company like Microsoft would buy Mojang for $2.5 billion dollars just because? Does that make any sense what so ever?

    Unity is also cooperating with Microsoft, and MS already bought an asset here (VS plugin?), plus made sure the windows devices were free. Does that all sound like a company without a plan? I think not.

    I highly doubt they would kill mods. I believe mods would just be moved to C# (Unity anyone?)

    Anyways. Just thinking out loud and wondering what everyone thought was really going on.
     
  6. im

    im

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  7. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    What?
     
  8. zDemonhunter99

    zDemonhunter99

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    Microsoft expects the acquisition to be break-even in FY15 on a GAAP basis.
     
  9. im

    im

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    nah that is not what its about

    the reason a company like microsoft buys something for like $2b

    is for the player base (the rolodex of email addresses and to sell it merchandise like toys, clothing, mugs..., think disney, microsoft maybe trying to break into this, who knows perhaps they just blew $2b cause they could have recreated it from scratch, without the player base, for far less.. they also bought a studio, but i think in short time a lot of them will leave cause its different when u own your own company or you work for indie company and when someone like microsoft buys you out and you work for a microsoft, so people will get unhappy quickly i would think and take the money and run, they just wont fit in or be happy in like a microsoft)

    microsoft also collecting monopoly pieces to brag about saying look at the nice properties i own. jazzes up an otherwise boring stock portfolio.. i mean honestly windows, office, xbox, visualstudio, everybody might be using it but its boring, no new news. have to do something to keep stock price being n+y multiples beyond reality.

    also when these deals work out management ect get rewarded with money, perks, increases in salary, basically they raid the money that would otherwise being out into other areas, research, development, stockholders and justify their overinflated salaries, bonues, ect.. u watch.. they be saying look we did something... that is exciting, unexpected..

    personally i think its kiss of death for minecraft watch the rats leave the sinking ship full of coin in their pockets.. i guess this means minecraft peaked they can suck more out of it and its find golden parachute... disney would have been better that least they know how to merchanise and keep thing going. i mean they been milking the mouse for like 100 years... then again how long has microsoft been milking windows... ;)

    so be on look out for minecraft underwear and slippers at your local walmart.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2014
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  10. JamesArndt

    JamesArndt

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    Yeah they already came out and said the purchase wasn't about the actual game. It was based around it's community and players.
     
  11. im

    im

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    Last edited: Sep 21, 2014
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  12. Vanamerax

    Vanamerax

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    I wouldn't be suprised if all mojang accounts need to be 'upgraded' or converted to a microsoft account at some point.

    Apart from that, I don't think Microsoft will make that many changes to minecraft itself or interfere with development, as it will risk to lose it's player base by doing that.
     
  13. ippdev

    ippdev

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    Yer too young to be tossing those loaded acronyms about :)
     
  14. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    MS need to be on more platforms, not less. I do not believe ms will restrict Minecraft's cross platform nature at all.
     
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  15. Taschenschieber

    Taschenschieber

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    Stop believing and start knowing! For example, by reading Mojang's announcement about the takeover.
     
  16. yoonitee

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    Because they made a big mistake?

    If Bill Gates was still in charge he would be like: "You did what? You spent $2 billion on a company that's only made $100 million and has more or less saturated the market?"

    On the other hand, maybe they will translate it into Chinese and make a big profit.

    Seems like a gamble either way.

    What next? Will they buy Flappy Birds for $10 trillion?

    Or maybe they bought it with Microsoft shares which will probably only be worth 1p each in a few years so they are trying to get rid of them as fast as they can!
     
  17. Ryiah

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    Microsoft's policy is "if we cannot do it ourselves, buy the company who can". :p
     
  18. zDemonhunter99

    zDemonhunter99

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    Not sure what you're talking about but Minecraft has sold over 100 million copies and that's excluding the merchandise and the Minecraft : Pocket Edition.
    You know that Minecraft supports several languages in-game and you can change it with the click of a button right?
     
  19. ShilohGames

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    Keep in mind that Microsoft is often a clueless company to their own demise. Knowing Microsoft, they will probably rewrite Minecraft so it only runs on Windows 9 and then require a Microsoft Live account in order to play. Microsoft has a long, rich history of buying the right properties and then completely ruining them. Microsoft has repeatedly segmented their own platform to the point of weakening it. Always expect Microsoft to choose the dumbest path possible, and you'll usually be able to predict their behavior.
     
  20. Ryiah

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    Indeed it supports quite a list of languages.

    http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Language
     
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  21. ShilohGames

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    Any normal company would try to ensure multiple platform support, but I would not automatically expect that from Microsoft. Actually, I could see Microsoft not only requiring Windows, but even requiring a specific version of Windows (such as Windows 9).
     
  22. zombiegorilla

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    MS is rapidly building and expanding the list of games available. They are pushing hard and fast to be big name in games. Notice how many brand name titles are starting to appear in the store. It will get more aggressive over the next few years. Though I'm allowed say any more than that right now, I will say that it is a good idea to pay attention to Windows as game platform.

    Minecraft gives them something big that they don't have... a well known, popular, family friendly IP. They have have Halo, but that is a pretty narrow demographic, Minecraft has a broader base.
     
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  23. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    Read it. Doesn't really mean anything. What people say publicly and what they are actually doing usually are two different things
     
  24. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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  25. tango209

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    Agreed. And I think we are seeing that in some areas. Azure and Team Foundation Server/Services support a bit more than just MS technologies.

    Given the amount involved, I would have to lean towards this being mostly a customer acquisition.
     
  26. Erisat

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    Just thought that was interesting.
     
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  27. GilesC9

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    Actually they've sold about 54 million units. :p
     
  28. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    He's probably confused it with registered users, they broke a 100 million registered users around the first of the year.
     
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  29. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    Not just interesting, but also a bit hypnotic.
     
  30. Josh-Naylor

    Josh-Naylor

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    Ask any 5-12 year old what Minecraft is and they know, ask the same who Microsoft is and they'll say "who?". They're probably trying to appeal to the future generation instead of you guys that have already made up your mind about them :D.

    Plus from an educational point of view, Mojang just scratched the surface with what's possible and MS are heavily promoting the new kids coding curriculum.
     
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  31. Teila

    Teila

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    This is a huge deal. My 14 year old girl gets up every morning, gets her homework done asap, and then gets on the computer to take one of those kids coding curriculum classes. She loves programming and modding for Minecraft. She is actually learning Java! If MS is going to promote this for kids, then more power to them. How nice for kids to actually get something useful out of gaming rather than spend every waking hour playing console games.

    Not only that, but it is a big incentive to do her schoolwork, making my life easier. :)
     
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  32. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    Interesting thought. That might be a possibility.
     
  33. Gigiwoo

    Gigiwoo

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    Teila - Which classes does she like? My son's 15 and might also enjoy them.
    Gigi
     
  34. Teila

    Teila

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    Gigiwoo, She is taking a Minecraft Modding class through Youth Digital. If you sign up for Plum District, you can find a coupon there for $100 off. The class is still not super cheap, but since my daughter is homeschooled, I made it part of her curriculum. She loves it.

    She is 14 so at the upper end of the recommended age and a pretty mature kid, but she loves it. The videos are funny and she calls Justin her "teacher". I hear her laugh out loud. So far, she has made pixel art for new objects she makes for the game. She has to code crafting skills to make the objects. Now she has only gotten through a few lessons so far but I have actually witnessed her turning off Minecraft to code, which is amazing. My kids have their own Minecraft server at our house and they play with friends that now live far away.

    Have your son watch the video and see if he likes the style. Some teens might find it too childish but my daughter loves it. She has a pretty good sense of humor. :) The website says adults take the class too so it might be okay for him.

    They also have some game design classes, but none for Unity. Since my daughter does a lot of 2d art, I might sign her up for the 2d game design class when she is done with that. She has an amazing set of original characters on her Deviant Art page that would make great game characters. :)
     
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  35. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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  36. im

    im

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    hopefully microsoft will buy them

    then we get real .net runtime and ide

    and price drop...
     
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  37. thxfoo

    thxfoo

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    MS .NET runtime will not run on most of Unitys market. Unitys main market is Android and iOS.
     
  38. MisterMatt

    MisterMatt

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    I wouldn't be so sure about that:

    http://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingASPNETVNext.aspx

    I have seen demos of vNext deploying applications with the .net runtime that can run on linux machines. Microsoft has been doing some really interesting things.
     
  39. thxfoo

    thxfoo

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    Quote from your link: "ASP.NET vNext (and Rosyln) runs on Mono, on both Mac and Linux today"

    So it is just Mono. It is not MS .NET runtime.
     
  40. MisterMatt

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    Looks like you are correct.

    I went to a presentation about vNext and thought they were saying the actual .net runtime was packaged up into I think it was about 26MB and deployed with the application.

    I pulled this from the following artice(http://www.hanselman.com/blog/aspnetvnextaugust2014statusrollup.aspx)

    "ASP.NET vNext apps get their own copy of the CLR/BCL when deployed"

    I also followed through to their github page and found this interesting piece: https://github.com/aspnet/home

    "NOTE: There is no Core CLR currently available on OSX/Linux. There is only a single platform (mono45) and a single architecture (x86)."

    I am just glad they are making strides in this direction. (Also after re-reading, I hope my original comment didn't seem too snarky, I don't always translate well over text)
     
  41. Myhijim

    Myhijim

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    Why does everyone overlook the merchandise ?

    Sure they have sold approx 56 million units.
    But think about all extra stuff, shirts, creeper plushies, even friggan lego. Microsoft will want to invest strongly in this, think about how much lego costs nowdays, if they sold even 20million units they would double their money.
     
  42. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    So even though this was necro'd by a stupid spammer, I noticed that what I had posted above I can actually talk about now:
    At the time I posted this, I was still at LucasFilm/Disney. We had just got into deal with MS to port 16 of our top mobile games to Windows phone store. By which I mean, they straight up paid us development costs (actually a bit more) to port/build several of current games. We still retained everything as if we had published them ourselves, only MS was paying for all our costs. Which was not cheap. If you are going to contract a game development team, an internal studio for something like Disney is probably most expensive route (we had to build a custom backed to support their platform). But money wasn't a concern for them, they wanted big titles on their store, and there is no way we would have bothered to port our games if they weren't paying us. I am sure our costs (probably like the minecraft ones) came out their marketing budget.

    Interestingly, here we are 5 years later and there is no Windows Phone any more and Disney/LF has no internal game development. heh.
     
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  43. Antypodish

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    Yep, I have seen that spammer necro post ...

    Following to thread and changes from years back, also Skype feels ruined (not without help of Skype team by itself) as well by M$, which was purchased around 2011. However they did get huge user base.

    I had windows phone back days, as Nokia had made another fantastic device. M$ had to ruin it.

    Now M$ seems feels relies on win 10 and data mining, as one of the income routes.

    Minecraft on consoles doesn't feel fun to play for me.
    However PC edition still gets additional stuff and moding is active. I am not following too close MC dev anymore, but seems is stil worth to play latest versions, as long there are up to date relevant mods.

    I miss however Feed The Beast, before they moved to different platform. If I remember, number of modpacks now require signup to the relevant service, in order to be able download. I am not sure if is good, or bad thing however. So definitely lots has changed sine years back.
     
  44. Player7

    Player7

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    Skype was trash and got worse after MS, and it seems now MS is replacing Skype with more even worse Trash.. I mean Teams.. utter garbage.

    "Minecraft on consoles doesn't feel fun to play for me."

    It hasn't improved on PC either but then Mojang are beyond useless.
     
  45. Ryiah

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    You know it's sad when the best feature you're looking forward to is raytracing support. :p
     
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