Hoping for the day that Minecraft shows up on a Nintendo system? That possibility could be in jeopardy as Microsoft has officially announced that they purchased the studio responsible for the popular mining, building and survival game. The deal went down for $2.5 billion, a hefty sum for a developer with a light catalog of games.
That catalog of games includes one of the most highly purchased PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 games of all time, though, so we’d say they probably got their money’s worth. So what does that mean for all of Microsoft’s competitors? If their own press release is anything to trust, not much:
Microsoft plans to continue to make “Minecraft” available across all the platforms on which it is available today: PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and PlayStation.
“‘Minecraft’ is one of the most popular franchises of all time,” said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox. “We are going to maintain ‘Minecraft’ and its community in all the ways people love today, with a commitment to nurture and grow it long into the future.”
Mojang’s own announcement post about the deal made it a point to mention that competitors are free to maintain their own properties as they will. That statement makes it sound like they’re prepared for possible repercussions from Sony (Minecraft PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions), Google (Minecraft: Pocket Edition for Android) or Apple (Minecraft: Pocket Edition for iOS).
Indeed, it must sting for the likes of Sony to have what is now considered a Microsoft product on their consoles. It’s a very unique situation that’s going to be closely analyzed as we head into the latter portions of 2014. It’s far too early to know what course of action Sony might take, and there’s a chance they might not take any action at all — Minecraft is a huge game that they won’t want to miss out on, and they might put up with it just to lure more folks to their side.
Even more interesting is the repercussions this would have on the game’s possible future on a Nintendo console. To date, not a single rendition of Minecraft has launched for a Nintendo product. We know many of you would love to see it (the image above is a concept image made by passionate petition managers), but for one reason or another Nintendo and Mojang haven’t come together to make that happen. Chances are if it hasn’t happened by now, then it most certainly will be a difficult task after today’s news.
