Now the news has hit the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29204518

Now even though I'm not a big fan of the whole Microsoft takeover idea, it sounds like they are keeping the majority of the Mojang Employees - which is a good start as they are the people that know the community as it s now, and know what to do in order to develop the game further.

Now we know funding was never an issue, but sometimes expertise is. I'm not saying the Mojang crew are not experienced, just look at the game they created and how popular it has been and continues to be! Microsoft may be able to help in that. Just look at the Halo series!

Plus Microsoft do have some very clever coders, so as has been mentioned on several websites, they might just be able to knock up a decent API to help Dev's make their mods.

At the end of the day - companies like Microsoft do eventually focus on profits. What we don't know about the deal is how much of Mojang's assets and rights to code / media are included in the deal. However, with one of their other popular games on the PC - Freelancer - they made sure the game was able to be modded. This led to many mod packs, of which some merged to be "must have" mods.

So, it would make sense for Microsoft to keep Minecraft free for Dev's to modify, and possibly even help them in some way (A good API for a start, and some way to stop mods conflicting with each other). Let's face it, the more awesome mods there are for a game, the more likely someone will show their friends, and the more likely their friends will want to get the game to play online with their mates, using those mods. Thus more sales.

Don't forget Realms - ideal for those people who don't want to play on a public server, but just with a few mates. Realms in itself is a monthly earner, and is far cheaper than running your own game server for the user. Imagine if Microsoft can port Realms to multiple platforms (and I'm sure they are already planning on it) - we could see the start of players on consoles hosting large worlds with a few select mods, and playing with people on PC, Mac, handhelds, etc at the same time - it's a big earner ... but it also develops the game

Soul, Halo series was created by Bungie. And they escaped Microsoft basement.
The thing is. Mojang can have as many artistic ideas as they want, but at the end of the day Microsoft executives will be the ones calling the shots.

Thought you do have some good points in regards to good things.
Microsoft does have enough money to throw at the games development.

Isn't private server like crazy-fools basically the same? Just host the server and tell only your friends about it.

Somewhat the same yeah except private servers usually run a whitelist where the joining member has to register and be approved before his/her account is allowed into the server.

We've thought about doing that but quickly dismissed as whitelisting is only an added security measure against griefers which we can handle with more ease than warm butter sliding off a knife.

At any rate. I'm happy about the Microsoft Buyout. "Why?!" i hear you ask. Well, let me explain by saying this very short statement.

"Microsoft has more money than most if not all software companies on the planet... At least EA can't afford to buy it now "

If EA were to actually buy it then we might as well have packed our bags and left right that instance.

LOL exactly, it would have turned into an over simplified game with no challenge except that to a 2 year old and been so full of "this is how you do this" hand holding, you could go through the entire game without ever actually having to think.

Not to mention the fact that we'd be launching through origin which would probably see you encountering such errors as

"unable to login, user name and/or password incorrect"

12 times until it finally decides that

"oh... wait no you're right. Those are your correct details."

pfft, thats hardly the worst problem, every single block would become DLC and u'd only start with dirt.

Nah even that would be DLC.
You would only start with an empty world devoid of even a sun of moon (as that would also be DLC) .
Some people might be happy that fall damage is a DLC too though..