Minecraft Switch

When games are successful, naturally sequels are expected. The insanely popular Minecraft appears to be taking a different approach. When Microsoft forked out a whopping $2.5 billion for the franchise in 2014, analysts expected the company would quickly churn out a sequel to make it a worthwhile transaction. It's now 2018 and the original game by Mojang is still being supported. So what's going on?

Although we've heard it previously, Microsoft's Minecraft boss Helen Chiang recently issued a reminder during an interview with Business Insider, that a sequel to Minecraft would not make sense. The reason why is because it would fracture the community.

Minecraft has more than 91 million monthly active players - which is reportedly ahead of the 78.3 million players in Fortnite. If Microsoft was to release a second Minecraft game, it would presumably split the community. Even though it sounds like a good idea from a financial standpoint, Chiang says it's not worthwhile:

We're trying to keep our community together...That's why our updates [are] free. We don't want to ask [players] to move from Minecraft 1 to Minecraft 2. We want them to just enjoy Minecraft. And there's other ways that we can expand that are more meaningful and authentic to what we want to be, rather than just releasing another iteration in the way that most other franchises do.

Despite Microsoft's decision to not release a sequel to Minecraft, it's still happy to grow the brand in other ways - with games like Minecraft: Story Mode and the recently announced Minecraft: Dungeons for PC now on the way.

What do you think about Microsoft's current stance? Do you agree a sequel doesn't really make sense for a game like Minecraft? Or would you like to see one in the future? Tell us below.

[source gamespot.com]