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https://youtu.be/MmB9b5njVbA

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Find out about the takeover of Mojang by Microsoft - when, why and how.

Microsoft has taken over the Swedish company, Mojang for £1.5 billion ($2.5bn) which was announced in September 2014.
Despite the game being taken over, it was allowed that all workers for Mojang could continue their work, but for Microsoft.

it is said that 'Notch' sold Minecraft as he no longer wanted the spotlight anymore. He wanted to work on what he wanted and when he wanted too but didn't want the pressure that came with being the owner of such a successful game.

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watch the story here

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Minecraft: The Story of Mojang - 20 Minute Short

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How has Minecraft changed since Microsoft have taken over?

Since Minecraft has been taken over by Microsoft, you are able to play the game on Windows 10. Apart from that, fans claim that there has not been many changes made.

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Increasing Audience:
Toys and branded merchandise flooded the shelves, and the first minecraft lego set– created after a successful campaign on the company's Cuusoo (later Ideas) scheme – was released just a month after the Xbox edition emerged. The latter was (as expected) an immediate success, shifting a million downloads in five days, selling an average of 17,000 copies per day after its May 2012 release, and racking up over 4 million sales on Xbox Live Arcade alone by October 2012.

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Increasing audience:
To truly get Minecraft out to the masses, an entirely distinct branch of the game entered development for the rising smartphone market: Minecraft Pocket Edition, now coded in C++.

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Cross-media ventures involving Minecraft.
It has an annual convention called Minecon where fans of the game and content creators would attend. Sometimes the content creators attend Q&A. There is also an official Twitter, Facebook page and Instagram for Minecraft as well as a website.

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Increasing audience:
January 12 2011 marked the milestone of one million Minecraft accounts registered; the wave of hype, and Minecraft's core of accessibility and simplicity, saw 10 million accounts registered just 6 months later. This was a hot property, and it was time for it to spread its net even further.

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"How was the takeover of Mojang received by the industry? Fans? Press?"

When Minecraft was bought back in 2014 by Microsoft, the press coverage was incredibly vast. This is due to the high amount of money Microsoft payed to buy out the game's initially indie development studio Mojang. This deal was so heavily discussed due to it being one of the most financially significant (at least in the public's view of the industry) events people had seen in a long time.

Fans of the game had mixed reactions, but mostly positive. In 2014, Mojang developers made posts on the Minecraft sub reddit announcing  they were being bought out by Microsoft. Fans welcomed the companies backing as it meant more funding, relevancy and updates for the game. However, Microsoft has a lot more profit based intentions than as mall indie development studio, meaning the game had the potentiality to be corrupted.

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15,778 votes and 5,479 comments so far on Reddit

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Promotion of Minecraft:
Minecraft's Alpha sales began on June 13th 2009. Less than a month later it had sold over 1,000 copies and gained over 20,000 registered players.
An explosion in development, which saw a regular Friday update schedule adding features like redstone, minecarts, dungeons and spooky underworld The Nether in quick succession, led to another explosion in sales, and caused Persson to expand the number of brains working on Minecraft.

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Who is the creator of minecraft? What were his aims for the game?

Markus Persson, more commonly known to the gaming community as 'Notch' is the creator of the sandbox game and founder of the company Mojang.
Minecraft was inspired by similar games such as Dwarf Fortress, a single player construction and management game; his goal was to produce a RPG variation of such a game.

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Find out about non-profit projects linked to Minecraft and Mojang - educational/community/social/cultural/charitable:

Mojang and Microsoft have founded a charity that is called Block By Block, in 2016. The charity allows local residents to improve their local areas by using their plans that they have created in Minecraft, whilst focusing on poor communities in developing countries.

It has increased the speed of the revival of urban neighbourhoods in more than 37 countries, impacting more than 1.8 million people's lives.

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Building stronger communities, block by block.

Building equality, block by block.

Building hope, block by block.

Building common ground, block by block.

Making a Difference with Minecraft

The Block by Block Foundation empowers communities to turn neglected urban spaces into vibrant places that improve quality of life for all.

Our unique methodology centers on Minecraft as a powerful tool for visualization and collaboration, actively engaging neighborhood residents who don't typically have a voice in public projects.

Block by Block projects transform lives and revitalize urban neighborhoods by improving public safety, economic opportunity, access to clean water, sustainability, and livability, block by block.

"I can see the difference people can make because I am a person who did that. I made a difference, and I will keep making a difference."

- KOCHA A., Block by block workshop participant

"For millions around the world, public spaces are key to people's livelihoods, safety, and health. Access to and use of quality public spaces is a civic right which must be upheld, particularly in the face of the COVID-19 threat."

- James Delaney, BLOCK BY BLOCK CHAIR

Block by Block has catalyzed the revitalization of urban neighborhoods in 37 countries, impacting the lives of more than 2.3 million people.

More than 30,000 community members-including women, children, elders, refugees, and the disabled-have participated in Block by Block workshops worldwide, including 100 pandemic-relief workshops.

"As an indigenous woman, I learned to overcome my fears, to interact with men, and to give them our points of view as women-that we too can design public spaces."

- ANTONIA, BLOCK BY BLOCK WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT, ESCONDIDO

Block by Block in the News

Our work adds up to larger impact-from more engaged communities and more livable cities to more forward-thinking public space policies at every level.

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Minecraft meets public space planning in the Block by Block initiative, an innovative collaboration between Mojang, Microsoft, and UN-Habitat.

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Find out about Microsoft Studios:

Microsoft Studios is a division of Microsoft based in Redmond, Washington. It was established in March 2000 for the development and publishing of video games for Microsoft Windows. It has since expanded to include games and other interactive entertainment for the namesake Xbox platforms, Windows Mobile and other mobile platforms, and web-based portals.

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Find out any evidence for the global success of the game.

Minecraft surpassed over a million purchases  less than a month after entering the beta phase in early 2011.
By April 2011,  Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million.
By March 2012, it had become 6th best selling PC game of all time.
In 2013, Mojang reported that there had been a 38% increase revenue from the previous year, when they revealed they had made $330 million.
All versions of the game had over 112 million monthly active players by September 2019.

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How does Microsoft promote and increase the audience for the game?

Microsoft distribute their retail packaged products primarily through independent non-exclusive distributors, authorized replicators, resellers and retail outlets. Individual consumers obtain these products primarily through retail outlets, such as Wal-Mart, Dixons and Microsoft stores.
To increase their audience, Microsoft teamed up with Nintendo in June 2018 to promote the cross-play of Minecraft on the Nintendo Switch. The use of creating products in relation to Minecraft, e.g. Lego sets, figurines and mystery packs also helped them extend their audience as they're targeting a new age range for the game.

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When was Minecraft released? What type of game was it and how was it initially received?

Minecraft was released in 2009 in May as a free demo version, the following year in December 2010 the beta version was released and on November 2011 the full version of the game was released.

the sandbox game was initially created by Markus Persson, better known as 'Notch'. Despite now it being one of the best selling games (conflict against Tetris) the game initially hit mixed responses from critics. They were impressed from the games controls, yet were disappointed by the lack of content that it had to offer. This is now not an issue with the varied gameplay (minigames, servers, mods, survival, story mode, and the original gameplay).

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"Find out why and evidence for the popularity of Minecraft."

Minecraft is a popular game due to the creative freedom provided in the game's sandbox engine and gameplay loop. It allows for infinitely generated worlds that can be explored and pursued to the limits of the player's imagination. Pair this with the goals and interesting events the player can encounter in the game (multiple 'worlds', a final boss, NPC locations) as well as the prospect of multiplayer and modded content, the game becomes worthy of an immense amount of diverse content with a lengthy playtime and genre appeal.

As on May 2019, gamesindustry.biz has reported that Microsoft has confirmed a total 176 million sales of the game across all platforms, as well as having over 200 million registered users globally. It has had an average player-base of 100 Million players a month which has only been rising ever since.

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continues to sell at a mind-boggling pace: Developer Mojang has now sold 122 million copies of the sandbox exploration game across all platforms, the Microsoft-owned Swedish studio announced today.

Microsoft's previous milestone was 100 million copies, which Minecraft reached in early June 2016. That means that a whopping 22 million people bought a copy of the game in the last nine months. Asked by Polygon, a Microsoft representative clarified that although the company has been allowing owners of the original Java-based PC/Mac version of Minecraft to get a free copy of Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition, Microsoft does not include those redemptions in its sales calculation.

"The 122M units is paid units to players only," the spokesperson told Polygon.

Mojang also announced today that Minecraft currently has 55 million monthly active players, an increase of 37.5 percent from the 40 million that Microsoft reported back in June. It's possible that the recent release of version 1.0 of Minecraft 's Windows 10 Edition and Pocket Edition - the former is essentially a port of the latter - helped raise the number of monthly active users. Mojang released the Ender Update for those versions in mid-December, officially bringing them out of beta.

Microsoft had been selling the beta of Minecraft's Windows 10 Edition at a discounted price of $9.99. However, now that the game is past version 1.0, that deal will soon end - the price will go up to its normal level, $26.99, after March 20.

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continues to sell at a mind-boggling pace: Developer Mojang has now sold 122 million copies of the sandbox exploration game across all platforms, the Microsoft-owned Swedish studio announced today. Microsoft's previous milestone was 100 million copies, which Minecraft reached in early June 2016.

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What formats is Minecraft available on and how it is distributed?
Minecraft is available on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC and Android/IOS. It is distributed through digital purchases and disc copies and is distributed to 112 countries, including UK, US, Germany and Netherlands.
https://www.mcvuk.com/revealed-the-countries-that-love-minecraft-most/

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who are Mojang? where are they based and what else do they do?

they are based in Stockholm, Sweden and are responsible for the creation and development of Minecraft which became a successful multimedia franchise. They have something between 50-60 employees. their original name was Mojang specifications, founded by Markus persson, but he desired a change and sold it to Xbox game studios (which then transformed into Microsoft studios in 2014) where its name was just turned into Mojang.