Aggressive Mining

[Mongrel]

There are nonagenarians waiting for the same thing.

[Lyrai]

Microsoft basically needs this more than any other company. They're desperate. The Xbox One is shaping up to make the Virtual Boy look amazing by comparison. Microsoft needs something they can not feel queasy and unsure about to bet on since ever since the Boner got announced they systematically fuck up, ruin, or otherwise don't get that golden boy halo hit they very, very desperately need.

Microsoft paid $2,500,000,000 for Minecraft because Notch wanted $2,500,000,000 from Microsoft as he left the building. Part of the contract states that Sony Minecraft is fine and safe. If Microsoft had any amount of leverage or control over the situation, Minecraft would be a fucking Games for Windows Live 2 launch title with Xbox One bonus content. But they had absolutely zero control other than an obscenely large sack of money, and Notch damn well knew they could not leave that room until they had something.

In so many words, Notch just made Microsoft his bitch.

[Classic]

I feel like that post is better with the link [to a J.Romero game] not actually working.

[zaratustra]

Sony does have a Minecraft-like, Everquest Landmark.

[Mongrel]

In so many words, Notch just made Microsoft his bitch.

... Daikatana on Steam?

I'm so very confused right now. Was that the link you meant to post?

[Grath]

In so many words, Notch just made Microsoft his pepper.

... Daikatana on Steam?

I'm so very confused right now. Was that the link you meant to post?

An early advertisement for Daikatana, created by marketer Mike Wilson and reluctantly[citation needed] approved by Romero, was a red poster with large black lettering proclaiming "John Romero's about to make you his bitch", a reference to Romero's infamous trash talk during gaming.

[Mongrel]

Man, that guy sure hasn't been up to much in the past few years, has he?

[Bongo Bill]

Microsoft didn't just buy a game here. They bought the premier nostalgia brand of the 2020s and 2030s. Kids fucking love Minecraft, and they're going to remember loving Minecraft when they're old and moneyed, and looking to buy things that remind them of when they used to have enough free time to play a game like Minecraft. This is an investment into merchandizing and mindshare.

[Thad]

Microsoft basically needs this more than any other company. They're desperate. The Xbox One is shaping up to make the Virtual Boy look amazing by comparison.

Nah, not really. They made a series of bad decisions and launched at a significant disadvantage, but they seem to be doing a solid job of turning it around. Things don't seem as dire for the Xbox One as for the Wii U. (And Sony's in pretty serious trouble right now too, just not its game division.)

Seems to me that there are a whole lot of game companies that are in worse straits than Microsoft right now -- they just don't have $2.5B to spend on acquisitions. Because they're in worse straits than Microsoft.

Microsoft paid $2,500,000,000 for Minecraft because Notch wanted $2,500,000,000 from Microsoft as he left the building.

You are describing a financial transaction between two parties, exchanging a product for an agreed-upon sum of money.

It's a freaking HUGE sum of money, but it's the same as any other sale in that someone gave up a product for a price that both parties agreed was fair.

Part of the contract states that Sony Minecraft is fine and safe.

The word "contract" does not appear anywhere in that link; I don't see any indication at all that this was a condition that Notch forced on MS. It seems likely to me that it was MS's decision.

If Microsoft had any amount of leverage or control over the situation, Minecraft would be a fucking Games for Windows Live 2 launch title with Xbox One bonus content.

I disagree. Minecraft is an extremely valuable property, but it's not a game that's going to move next-gen consoles by itself. Making it exclusive to Xbox One (or to Windows, or to Windows Phone) would mean MS makes LESS money from it, not more; the definite lost PS3/PS4/Android/iOS sales from such a decision would not be made up by hypothetical sales of additional games/software/subscriptions for Xbox One or Windows Phone.

Ars has a pretty good piece on why MS is (at least for now) keeping Minecraft multiplatform; it's worth a read.

But they had absolutely zero control other than an obscenely large sack of money

This is a null-content phrase. Absolutely zero control aside from TWO AND A HALF BILLION DOLLARS is in fact a significant amount of control. This is like saying absolutely nothing is preventing me from levitating other than gravity and the relative weights of myself and the Earth. It's a true statement but it dismisses something significant as if it were insignificant.

[Lyrai]

Multiple veterans of Microsoft are jumping ship
Studios have de-prioritized the Xbox One versions of games, even behind, of all things, the Wii U and 360 versions
This company is making an Xbox One exclusive game
The Kinect 2 is so bad, even Major Nelson doesn't plug his in

These are just some of the reasons that underscore why the Boner is shaping up to be a colossal failure. I have one sitting under my desk right now. I got it for free. I have been looking at selling it to get a PS4, because it's just so god damned awful compared to pretty much everything else. Technology-wise it runs games at an inferior fidelity to the PS4, the Kinect 2 is an abhorrent mess, Microsoft only recently jettisoned the fucking thing finally and allowed developers to make games with all of the boner's power, instead of demanding that 10% of the boner always be dedicated to the Eye of Sauron,

To further underscore how badly it's going for them, let's look at what they marketed to be New Halo in terms of both impact and budget, Titanfall:

700k at launch in March, almost "no impact" on console sales, 3 million mark passed in Mid-August. For a little indie game or even a moderately decent first party title this would be amazing. For Titanfall and the money sunk into it, and the expectations? This is "Kill yourself" levels of failure.
By comparison: Halo 3 moved 2.5 million units on it's FIRST DAY. It ended up passing that 3 million mark in about one month

Microsoft was wanting that level of sales. They got a wet fart.

[Lyrai]

In so many words, Notch just made Microsoft his pepper.

... Daikatana on Steam?

I'm so very confused right now. Was that the link you meant to post?

An early advertisement for Daikatana, created by marketer Mike Wilson and reluctantly[citation needed] approved by Romero, was a red poster with large black lettering proclaiming "John Romero's about to make you his bitch", a reference to Romero's infamous trash talk during gaming.

THe ad in question

It wasn't even an early advertisement, this was how they announced Daikatana to the world.

[Mongrel]

Oh man Titanfall. This in no way proves anyone's point and is purely anecdotal, but I was just joking with a friend yesterday that we'd already completely forgotten that game ever existed.

[Bongo Bill]

Trying to leverage Minecraft to move Xbones would be like hitching a carriage to the back of a Model T. Microsoft is such a hydra of a company that it's hard to guess whether they'd be dumb enough to try.

[Brantly B.]

Studios have de-prioritized the Xbox One versions of games, even behind, of all things, the Wii U and 360 versions

Be careful extrapolating from stuff like this. As it turns out, a lot of the time stuff doesn't show up on one modern platform or another is because the current engine or some other common component doesn't work or isn't licensed for that platform yet, not because they don't WANT to. EA's famous crapper-dropping of the Wii U was largely because they just couldn't get their damned engines to run on the thing (and, yes, because it wasn't financially logical to spend the time fixing it). Among the many things Sony did right with the PS4 was actually plan to support as many existing engines as possible before releasing the thing, so it now gets the most ports just by default.

By comparison: Halo 3 moved 2.5 million units on it's FIRST DAY. It ended up passing that 3 million mark in about one month

Completely apples to oranges. Halo 3 was an end-of-trilogy release on an established 2-year-old platform. Titanfall is more analogous to Crackdown, except for the part about being unique and interesting.

[Lyrai]

Completely apples to oranges. Halo 3 was an end-of-trilogy release on an established 2-year-old platform. Titanfall is more analogous to Crackdown, except for the part about being unique and interesting.

Gears of War (the first one), 3 million in 10 weeks

[Brantly B.]

Yeah that'll do it.

Console exclusives in general are really wallowing in the shadow of the multiplats this year though. The PS4's biggest exclusive release so far (inFamous: Second Son) barely lipped over a million at launch, and has been beaten out every month by a port of an indie PC game (Outlast). Oh, and its actual top-selling exclusive is a racing game that's been delayed for most of a year now (DriveClub). So, whee.

[Thad]

Completely apples to oranges. Halo 3 was an end-of-trilogy release on an established 2-year-old platform. Titanfall is more analogous to Crackdown, except for the part about being unique and interesting.

Gears of War (the first one), 3 million in 10 weeks

Yeah that'll do it.

Not really. It's still a comparison of a game released in November a year after a really good launch to a game released in March four months after a really bad one.

And even then, the comparison is of 3 million copies in 10 weeks to, what, 3 million copies in 20 weeks? Those definitely aren't Destiny numbers, or even Mario Kart 8 numbers, but they're not abject failure, either, and suggest that decoupling the Kinect and dropping the price to $400 is a step in the right direction.

None of which is really relevant to Minecraft at all. Nobody's going to buy a $400 console just to play Minecraft.

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

From a server Starr goes to:

[Healy]

Heh. From that height and that angle, it looks like a Sim City game.