Pause for thought: Are Microsoft and Minecraft a Rare combination?

As I sat eating Strawberry Sensation Pop-Tarts for breakfast yesterday in my iniquitous palace of games journalism, confirmation arrived that Microsoft’s acquisition of Mojang will go ahead for a sum of $2.5 billion (1.5 billion quid). My first thought while the magma-like pastry crumbled under a swift enamel assault: “Isn’t Project Spark out next month?”

Project Spark is out within a month. October 7 to be exact. For anyone not aware of what Project Spark is, well… the closest Microsoft could get to having its own Minecraft without setting out to buy Minecraft. Which it has done. Crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of the YouTube generation…

Not that Microsoft would be so dumb as to slap consumers in the face to force its plan for Xbox *cough* E3 2013 *cough*. As countless pundits have already gushed, Minecraft is a global phenomenon with a large chunk of the Internet’s population on its side. You don’t mess with that, particularly if you have a reputation as patchy as Microsoft does and your new console isn’t performing as well as you’d hoped.

Rumblings about the acquisition surfaced online last week. Mojang is the Nordic studio that, along with more actively consumerist Rovio, has inadvertently led the charge for new wave indie games during the last five years. The small company is now just another first-party studio within Microsoft’s multinational corporate structure and follows the well-known examples of Rare and Bungie, not to mention Ensemble, Digital Anvil and Lionhead.

Or should I say Banjo-Kazooie, Halo, Age of Empires, Freelancer and Fable? Developers absorbed by Microsoft have a tendency — a tendency, not destiny — to never exceed the reputation of properties they created before acquisition. Mojang’s founders, including Notch Persson, are leaving the company. The world can see the Microsoft is really buying Minecraft; Xbox and Microsoft Studios chief Phil Spencer even announced the purchase on Microsoft’s website as “Minecraft to Join Microsoft”.

Spencer is trying hard to refocus Xbox One on games after last year’s pre-launch debacle during Don Mattrick’s stewardship of the brand. Microsoft’s ID@Xbox scheme was set up to tap into the burgeoning independent developer scene, an attempt to encourage the cool kids to flock to Xbox. Owning Minecraft sends a clear message to the gaming world at large, and Sony, that Microsoft is serious about indie devs.

Yet there are some other issues around Minecraft’s acquisition. Microsoft’s announcement at Gamescom last month of Rise of the Tomb Raider’s fuzzy time-sensitive presence on Xbox kicked off debate over the importance of exclusives for next-gen. The recent gangbusters success of Bungie’s much-hyped, multiformat Destiny could detract from its ageing former franchise Halo, the one major hit Microsoft has to call its own. Spencer must be aware that Xbox One can’t subsist on Titanfall.

Microsoft has taken the approach of acquiring proven developers and their properties since it entered the console business in 2001 . Most of the company’s first-party offerings have never quite lived up to those developers’ existing reputations. Being acquired by Microsoft is now associated with the end of an era rather than a sign of future greatness.

“The Minecraft team’s unique vision, creative energy and innovative mindset make them a perfect fit alongside our other global studios.”

~ Phil Spencer, head of Xbox and Microsoft Studios

Mojang issued a statement on its website aimed at reassuring Minecrafters, but it seems like Spencer took Persson’s nickname as a challenge. Forget that Notch is the bloke who cancelled an Oculus Rift version of Minecraft when Facebook bought the VR company for $2 billion a few months ago; to a lot of Minecraft players Microsoft buying the game is like the Empire capturing the Rebel Alliance’s base on Yavin IV. As majority shareholder in Mojang Notch stands to make a fortune on the deal with Microsoft, according to an estimate by Forbes. Yet he’s already a wealthy man thanks to Minecraft, and doesn’t care for the fame he’s garnered.

Mojang may eventually be cut free from Microsoft, to go the way of Bungie. It might stay only to wither like Rare. Whatever happens, and whether Mojang continues to build on the last five years of Minecraft madness or not, the open landscape of indie gaming has been blighted by an Xbox monolith.