What people aren't understanding is that minecraft isn't what you guys think. Minecraft is a game. It has no coders or IP outside of itself unless the deal says so. Notch's company Mojang has the coders and IP to the other games such as Scrolls. They are making other games. With mojang's recent crackdown on modding APIs I'm not sure the company would change much, but the community would get worse than it is. Instead of a bunch of stupid kids and a few good, inspired people you'd have a ton of stupid kids. I wouldn't mind seeing minecraft in C++ though.
It looks like the deal is purchasing Mojang outright, which basically is Minecraft since no one really gives a fuck about Scrolls or Cobalt. It looks like they have $205 million in assets and made $115 million in profit last year. I bet they are making a bit of money with Lego right now and are only going to rake in more. There have been four sets in the past couple years but Lego is going to put Minecraft Lego sets in their main toy line. Six more are coming out this fall and they are probably going to be some of the hottest toys this Christmas. It could actually rival Lego Star Wars.
I think the community is souring on Notch lately but it has nothing to do with modding APIs. Basically, he doesn't want server owners selling items or abilities to players. That will cripple a lot of servers and going to piss some people off, but it's understandable. Minecraft has popped up a cottage industry around it. The Bukkit team was going to kill Bukkit until Mojang actually informed them that they actually own Bukkit so they can't kill it, which just shows how the whole thing is a bunch of amateurs. When Mojang hired some of the original Bukkit devs, they actually bought Bukkit as well but they never announced it or told the remaining Bukkit devs. I actually don't think they need to do a lot for a Minecraft 2 except overhaul it to make it run better. Despite it's graphics, it's a pretty big CPU hog for computers and destroys servers.
I do worry in general that the moding won't work as well. The Xbox One can actually run Windows8/Windows Phone apps so you could have updates go almost simultaneously on all platforms. That means they could have a different Minecraft in the app store than the full Minecraft. If there was a way to make a Minecraft Metro app just as moddable as the current Minecraft, that could be amazing. I just don't know if Microsoft would put the same effort into supporting/allowing mods as Mojang does now. At least EA didn't buy it because you could just say goodbye to mods right then. I loved Battlefield 1942 so much because of the mods like Desert Combat, Pirate, Forgotten Hope, but it all went to shit once EA took control. The game itself interested me for a bit, but the mods are what kept me in.
At least Mojang has quite a bit of assets and is generating quite a bit of cash. I mean, Facebook bought Whatsapp for $19 billion and Oculus for $2 billion. If they had bought Mojang before the PS4 version came out, they really could have created a reason to sell some XB1s and get kids into the Xbox (and in Microsoft hopes the Windows) ecosystem. Microsoft has a giant wad of overseas cash and a need to get kids to want an XB1. They probably overpaid, but it's a better purchase than Oculus Rift for the same price.