What's strange is that buying Mojang for $2.5b makes better sense for microsoft than buying a company like take-two interactive which has a market cap for $1.9b with a portfolio including but not limited to; Grand Theft Auto, Bioshock, XCom, Sid Mier's Civilization, Red dead redemption, 2k sports series(incl. WWE) and borderlands.

I just don't understand.

People don't understand that it isn't as easy as just buying these companies when you have money. Microsoft could buy every popular studio if they wanted to with their lunch money, but that can't do it.

This can't be about helping the XBone. They could have cut the price by $100 and it wouldn't have cost them 2.5 billion until they sold 25 million more consoles.

Take-two is a publicly listed company with a market capitalisation of less than $1.9. Nothing preventing them from buying shares here and there until %19 and then make a deal with some majority shareholders to buy at a 20%-30% premium to bring their shares to 40% prompting them to make an official bid with a 25% premium while continuing to amass shares until it reaches over 51%. At that point, the board will recommend shareholders to sell their shares and most people will be happy to cash in. For Microsoft it would have been quite nice as GTAV would be releasing in a month on current gen. Either they rack in the profits from the millions GTAV will sell on both consoles...  or they cancel out the PS4 version and anounce GTAVI exclusively for X1.

Will this be Rare all over again?

I`m completly agreeing on  DirtyP2002  Statement .

MS  is tryin to pay minimun in taxes in UE and with new laws they prefere to use all the money the can in aquisitions instead of paying more taxes .

Unfortuanlly Microsoft is more woried on Expanding Mobile Divison Than Xbox ONE .

Thats why  Ms Shares Holders and Stya Nadella Grenligthed this so that Minecraft Becames Exclusive on Ms Phones and maybe also on X1 .

But there more concerned in the Boost of Mobile Division than the X1 because lets not forget theres Shares Holders that want Xbox out of Microsft .

That's really the problem MS faces in video games. They had a great success with X360 because they came ahead with a powerful hardware, superior version for a long time, and that Sony was not that great, and Nintendo so different... but so far they can't build great studios and licenses over time (the way Sony, Nintendo, and a long time ago Sega was doing) or just end up bin trashing it. They just overpay and destroy a studio once every few years.

But Rare wasn't a one-hit wonder, though.

Why the fuck would you want to start a new company when you have an already successful one?

I bet it's not. Not if you have standards. Which Notch supposedly did.