What if Nintendo bought Minecraft instead of Microsoft?

CastletonSnob

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As you know, Microsoft bought Minecraft back in 2014. Well, what if Nintendo bought Minecraft instead of Microsoft?

I think Minecraft would have been a better fit for Nintendo than Microsoft.
 

Chimpzy

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Not so sure Minecraft would actually be better off under Nintendo than Microsoft.

Depends heavily on how hands off Nintendo is willing to be with Mojang. Microsoft let Mojang continue doing their own thing, including releasing versions of the game on competing platforms. That ubiquity I think is part of the reason why Minecraft has remained relevant for so long. No matter what platform you have, there is a version of Minecraft for you to play, and has for the past decade.

Nintendo, however, has been and still is far less keen on allowing stuff under their mantle on platforms other than their own, let alone competitors. It's possible that under Nintendo, Minecraft would've become less popular in the long term due to exclusive to Nintendo platforms.
 
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sXeth

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I'd almost put the question as "Would Nintendo have bought Minecraft"


Despite immediately flooding it with Microtransactions, I'm still not sure if Minecrafts really actually made back the huge amount of money for Microsoft, given the corollary effect of being the highest selling game ever was also that everyone already owned it before that happened.


I don't know if Dungeons has much traction outside "gaming" circle (ie, kids on mobile), but it certainly seems lukewarm at best.


So would Nintendo every buy an IP that they probably couldn't make cash back on, and they couldn't really pull back to an exclusive without eating a ton of backlash (sometime MS has noticably just avoided, the closest they game was requiring you to have an MS account for crossplay). Nintendo isn't short of cash, by all reports. But they also don't have over half of all computers paying into them (along with the default office programs and such for business) to float a near infinite budget of whimsy.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Oh look it’s another “what if” thread courtesy of Castleton Snob. My day is now complete, and it’s only 8:17AM!
 
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immortalfrieza

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I couldn't help but look at the title and think "Nintendo bought Microsoft!?"

On topic, given how overzealous Nintendo is about their IP, it would probably result in the parade of imitators having more difficulty getting off the ground while Nintendo would hold onto it jealously to ensure no other platform could get it for quite a while, if ever. I know I personally like Starbound and Terraria far more than Minecraft. Then of course there's all that B.S. Nintendo pulls with let's plays and such.
 

Xprimentyl

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Nothing to add, but just thought it was funny that I read the thread title as "WHAT IF NINTENDO BOUGHT MINECRAFT INSTEAD OF "BUYING" MICROSOFT?" Raised my eyebrows a bit; thought maybe I'd missed some pretty substantial gaming news. :ROFLMAO:
 

Hawki

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Not sure what the point would be? Isn't Minecraft meant to be played on a PC? Y'know, the platform that Nintendo mostly refuses to touch?
 
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sXeth

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Not sure what the point would be? Isn't Minecraft meant to be played on a PC? Y'know, the platform that Nintendo mostly refuses to touch?

Idk, I play it on PS4 (although I do use KB/M since that became available like, 6 years ago now), works fine there. I do understand PC has mods, but most either don't work well, and most of the "good" ones I find add overcomplexity to the game which really misses the point.
 

Bedinsis

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I think it would fit horribly with their corporate profile. They are very protective of their IP; part of the reason Minecraft took off was because people were able to share their creations in social media. Just look at how Super Mario Maker was implemented to get an idea of how Nintendo thinks when it comes to sharing what you've made.
 
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Dreiko

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Never played that thing. Not interesting in such games where you kinda have to make up your own purpose of play as you go. I need either a narrative or a mechanical hook to draw me into a game and minecraft had neither. Also it's prolly an age thing cause by the time it came out I was decades past my playing with legos phase.

MS I think bought it because it was American. Nintendo is Japanese so they likely wouldn't value it or utilize it in an Amerian-like manner...which could go either of two ways. They may have made it actually interesting but potentially ruining whatever fans it does have find in it, or they may have just ruined it for everyone.

But yeah as far as I'm concerned the only notable trait of the game is that it is known by and played by a lot of people. Kinda like Fortnite actually. You just play it to play something lots of people play, not because you necessarily like it.