honestly ..
my prayers have been answered.
in my opinion, microsoft is one company that really, really makes their games complete. polished.
maybe not AWESOME OMFGBBQ but you can count on them having everything in the game you'd want. Look at the Age Of- games.
Notch started work on minecraft, then as soon as it started selling he quit doing real developing and just filled it with flowers (the hats equivalent in minecraft).
In my dreams, microsoft will make a game called minecraft 2, which is exactly like minecraft 1, except there is real advancement (mobs become thougher, smarter as nights go by) and there will be a real endgame (build a rocket, or some other machine to take you back to civilization).
And i will play it over and over and over.
Minecraft is still pretty huge. People have even made actual working computers in it.
Personally I find the fact that they used java really limits it. I have a small server I run that me and some friends sometimes hop on but the map has gotten huge and it just bogs right down. Java is just not efficient for this type of thing.
Between these two posts, it pretty much nailed what Minecraft NEEDS to do to further itself as a game. Notch has been sitting pretty much as Valve has with Team Fortress, Portal, and long before Half Life - now just sitting back and collecting revenue.
With the technical marvels that the game has done under Java, it was severely limited. Under a more proper finessed development, and device and platform integration, further aspects can be branched out more, using more of a solid modern technologies - along with Microsoft in software expertise and architecture.
Though I say this, they also CANNED great software in the past. Flight Simulator being one of them in favor of Flight. And recently, Streets and Trips in favor of the Map app, with no route planning what so ever or route saving. These things happened not even under Nadella's helm either (under Balmer).
So there is a right to be concerned. But there is a right to have some expectations to having Minecraft being in more capable hands than as it is right now, sitting and not going anywhere outside of unknown and not polished ways of implementation of mods under a REALLY unideal platform of Java.
If anything it would lead to a complete, fully open world (beyond a sandbox model) of video games, with full interactive terrain and manipulation along with the quests dynamically revolving around what you change the world it is in - gee... like real life?
It is something that Minecraft perhaps originally set out to do, or at least thought of, but no one can ever get outside of putting it to better use, other than mods and what Mojang puts out.