It's no big secret that Minecraft was based on Infiniminer. Notch has always said so himself from the very beginning. His reason for creating Minecraft was that he discovered Ininiminer shortly before the development of it was discontinued and so started his own version of it.

edit:

There was never really competition between them. Development of Infiniminer ended before Notch even started on Minecraft,

I love when the Infiniminer vs. Minecraft debate ignites because the only basis for calling Minecraft a rip-off of Infiniminer is in a mechanic that Ken Silverman developed on his own accord over a decade prior. I even made a video about it: http://www.pixelships.com/adg/epf009.html

Basically, having a world made up of cubes does not inherently make your game a rip-off of any other game. That would be like saying Final Fantasy is a rip-off of Dragon Warrior because both games use tilemaps.

Also, I've played Infiniminer. It's very much NOT the same as Minecraft. The only similarities is that they both have cubical worlds, they both have pixel-art style graphics, and you can mine stuff in both games. That's about where the similarities end. Infiniminer is a team-based multiplayer game about finding resources and getting them back to a drop point, with each team member choosing a class and each class having a unique ability which can help in finding resources or protecting your team. Minecraft was originally just a computerized block-placing program, technically not even a game, but then evolved into a survival adventure of sorts.

The only real benefit MS has in purchasing Mojang is to pick up the audience. If they immediately drop minecraft, they just threw 2.5bn down the toilet because the audience wont be nearly as perceptive to anything that comes after.

For the near term, I see no real changes. near-mid, maybe some ms influence will be seen^[1], mid-long for sure some influence^[2] will be felt.

That said, maybe they'll move realms over to Azure right away. Might not be a bad idea tbh.

Minecraft One (By Microsoft Studios)

The blocks are proprietary. You need to buy a pickup license to pickup each kind of block. Each pickup block license is $0.99. You need to buy a drop license to drop each kind of block. Drop block licenses start at $1.99, and the price varies by the type of block.

Basic objects can be crafted. Advanced objects must be purchased from the Microsoft store. Prices and availability varies. You need a FREE Live account to login to the store.

The Standard license costs $30 and limits your world to 1000 blocks. For $50 you can increase your world to 2000 blocks! For infinite worlds you must purchase a Professional license for $500. Yearly upgrades are required to keep playing. You can upgrade a Standard license for $15. To upgrade a Professional license please contact your local Microsoft products distributor for a quote.

Only one avatar comes with any license. You can purchase extra avatars against your license for $15 each. Avatars are not transferable between licensed worlds. Multiplayer is supported, but players can only play with avatars licensed for the world they are in. Contact Microsoft for a quote on infinite avatars or for world transferable avatars!

There's no way Microsoft could ever get away with that kind of stunt because every version of Minecraft ever made is readily available for download and the modding community is reliant on having access to older versions. If Microsoft prevented the download of older versions, the modding community would fall apart, which would rapidly kill a huge chunk of the interest in Minecraft, making Microsoft's 2.5 Billion acquisition one of the biggest wastes of money ever in the gaming industry.

And again, other games would rise up from the ashes to replace Minecraft. Microsoft has very little wiggle-room and could very easily and VERY quickly destroy the Minecraft user base.

TBH though, it makes me curious how they figure they can make back that 2.5 Billion... Maybe selling more copies on other platforms to people who don't mind owning the same game on multiple platforms? More merchandising perhaps? Paid-entry competitions? *shrugs*

...nooooooooo... I know what they intend to do... MAKE THE GAME FREE AND SELL ADVERTISING SPACE.

...it's the end of the world as we know it.

So what you're saying is... Microsoft will probably prevent the download of older versions.

Microsoft is an odd company when it comes right down to it. Between hints of brilliance are some of the most insipid and stupidest ideas ever conceived, but when it comes down to it, it's a large, publically owned corporation led by the whims of shareholders who only care about money and not the products and services offered by said company.

...same can be said about a TON of tech companies, actually.

Microsoft doesn't take chances. Microsoft takes shortcuts.

The problem with them not changing anything or not changing much is that people just say, "fuck it, I'll just stick with this version, it works just fine." For all intents and purposes, Windows 8 is still Windows 7. They just added a stupid layer to the GUI to make it appear "new". As usual, they took shortcuts doing it and the result is that it does more harm than good, but it's different so enough people still "upgrade". Hell, some of these dummies even convince themselves that 8 is better than 7... SMH.

Memos have leaked from developers inside Microsoft basically telling their managers that they want to fix annoyances within Windows (e.g., cmd.exe) and that it wouldn't take much, but their managers forbid it because they can't list it as a bullet point in a sale. If anything, acknowledging the weaknesses will look bad so instead they just pretend they don't exist and paint another stupid wasteful layer on top to make it seem newer...

The main reason that Microsoft is successful is because of anti-trust business arrangements, like having Windows bundled with computer hardware at computer stores. The average consumer cannot put a computer together, and does not shop for computers on NCIX or NewEgg. And even if they did, they'd just buy one by default with a Windows license anyway because they don't know any better. Microsoft still has a monopoly on PC systems. Apple has just barely broken into it, but they're no better so that's not solving anything. Microsoft still maintains a virtual monopoly. That combined with business' reliance on Microsoft Office (which again is basically a monopoly, and basically was installed through anti-trust business practices) ends up vendor-locking every dummy out there into Microsoft.

Despite there being adequate alternatives, and in many ways superior alternatives, you can't convince people to go through the pains of trying something actually new to them. Imagine how quickly desktop Linux and LibreOffice could surpass user-friendliness of Windows and MSO if the masses began to use it, and all of that capital currently being wasted on Microsoft was instead made available to the open source communities that bring us FLOSS. They already do a great job of being functional and reliable. They just need a little paint.

Actually, there are some nice speed improvements in Windows 8. Unfortunately, the new UI additions make it too unattractive to upgrade to (for me at least).

I don't think that's actually true. Weren't the majority of Windows users running Win7 before Win8 came out?

Blaming the shortcomings of your own code on the one in charge of the runtime is really lame.

Unless they have no choice but to buy it even if they don't like it. Make deals so new premade PCs come with the new versions, slowly remove support for older versions (regardless of how popular they remain), get older versions off shelves, etc. Remove choice, and people will buy it whether they're happy with it or not.

But then they'd only get $80 or so from each person on the planet for that one OS, and then where would they be?