[ryandvm]

Look at what Microsoft was able to do with Bungie. They took Bungie, who was effectively a one-hit shop, and milked the Halo IP for the better part of 10 years. Hell, they were centimeters from spinning it into a Hollywood blockbuster.

This is the exact same play and frankly, they're pretty good at it. They're going to turn the Minecraft franchise into a Xbox/Windows exclusive. Obviously that's going to piss off a lot of folks, but it's still going to result in a ton of XBox sales - at least as many as Halo was responsible for. They'll iterate on this for the next 10 years and my guess is they'll do it quite successfully.

[rcamera]

The thing is that what makes Minecraft strong is its community, unlike Halo. You won't see Minecraft succeeding at being Windows exclusive, or by making Minecraft 2, 3 or 4. There is a plethora of community mods made and being made for MC, you won't see that happening for any sequel, not at the same level.

[ryandvm]

I don't think that's true - at least not for children.

My kids are fairly young, but both of them play Minecraft on the Xbox purely for the creative outlet. They've only played a few times with other kids on Xbox live.

I suspect as they grow older they'll be more interested in online multiplayer. However, like most parents, I haven't figured out how to let that happen and still shelter them from the frothing insanity I used to regularly encounter when I'd play Halo back in the day.

[gknoy]

Private servers, with whitelists. Because the other players are not anonymous, they're less likely to behave poorly. As the admin, you can ban them, and either call their parents or let your kids deliver the news in person, much as you could if someone came over and started breaking things in person on a play date.

""" Hi, this is Alice's dad. Mal has been really mean to her when playing on our Minecraft server. It's a shared creative world that Alice, her friends, and cousins have been cooperating to build a city in together. Mal decided it would be fun to destroy most of the city, and cover the rest of it in lava.

This really Alice's feelings, as she and the others have spent a long time building together.

Unless Mal will apologize to Alice and the rest of their friends, we aren't willing to let Mal play with us this way. """

There's probably a better way to give the "your kid's being a jerk to my kid" than what I came up with off the top of my head, of course. I suspect that the rest of your kids' peers would swiftly ostracize griefers, as well.

[ryandvm]

Great idea. Thanks!

[forax]

I don't think it's fair to call Bungie a one-hit shop. Pathways into Darkness, Myth, and Marathon were all successful and well respected. Halo definitely moved them onto the big stage by pushing them off the mac platform. I agree with everything else you say though.

[k__]

Aren't they a little late?

Halo wasn't released anywhere when they bought it, so they could use it as a cash cow for the XBox.

Minecraft is already everywhere.

[ryandvm]

You aren't thinking uncreatively enough. There will be Minecraft 2, Minecraft 3, Minecraft: Reach, Minecraft MMO, Minecraft Web Series, Minecraft: The Movie, ad nauseam...

[mikeash]

Bungie had at least three hits (Pathways into Darkness, Marathon, and Myth) even if you don't count the successful sequels to successful games. Halo was likely to have been a huge hit (relative to Bungie) if they had been able to finish and ship it. (That may have been a big "if", as my understanding is that they were struggling financially after the Myth 2 installer debacle, but their ability to produce aside from finances was well established.)

Call it three or four hits, depending on how you count Halo, or the Halo-that-never-was.