Microsoft is reportedly in talks to acquire Swedish game maker Mojang for $2bn, with the deal anticipated to close by end of the week making it the first multibillion-dollar deal under the reign of the tech major’s new chief executive Satya Nadella.
The latest deal would bolster Microsoft’s 13-year-old Xbox videogame business, at a period amid augmenting competition in the global video game console market.
Mojang would be the first multibillion-dollar acquisition by Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, since he was named to the top job in February. It would also be an unexpected plunge by him as he has signalled Xbox isn’t a core business for Microsoft.
Since being originally launched in 2009, Mojang has sold over 50 million copies of ‘Minecraft’ and made over $100m in profit in 2013 from the game and merchandise, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In addition, the game maker expanded brand beyond videogames by signing licensing deals with Scholastic for handbooks, Lego for toys and Warner Pictures for making a feature film.
Minecraft is already offered on Xbox, as well as on Sony’s PlayStation, PCs and smartphones.
Last month, researchers at Microsoft developed a speculative execution system for mobile cloud gaming dubbed ‘DeLorean’, which is claimed to predict your next move.
Mainly targeted at enhancing cloud-based gaming capabilities, the new system works by produces speculative rendered frames of potential possible results and can cover up to 250ms of network latency.
