http://online.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-agrees-to-acquire-creator-of-minecraft-1410786190

Recently the popular Indie game Minecraft was purchased by Microsoft for a whopping 2.5 billion dollars. According to the above article, one of the main reasons for the purchase was to boost Windows phone sales, which have been struggling recently. Previously, Mojang—the company that created Minecraft—stated that there was no compelling reason to create Minecraft for the Windows phone system, as a very small percentage of phones operate on it. Now however, it seems Microsoft is using Minecraft as a tool to attract users to its platform by creating a Minecraft app that could have extra features compared to other platforms. It remains to be seen what Microsoft will do with regards to console. Currently Minecraft operates on Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s X-box. However, a strategy Microsoft may take to attract more gamers to the X-box franchise will be to make Minecraft exclusive to X-box. Another strategy Microsoft might take, and in my opinion the more likely one, is that Minecraft will remain on all platforms and Microsoft will just continue to operate Minecraft as Mojang did. I think this is the more likely option because Minecraft is already on both Platforms so it would be difficult to remove it and because making it exclusive to X-box would greatly diminish Minecraft’s consumer base, and therefore revenue for Microsoft. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft’s business strategy will be in the months to come.