Microsoft bought Minecraft for HoloLens, Nadella says

Minecraft isn’t just that game your kids can’t stop talking about, it’s also a key piece of Microsoft’s most exciting new technology

Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella has confirmed in an interview with the New York Times that HoloLens was one of the major reasons his company spent $2.5 billion on the Lego-like block-building game Minecraft and developer Mojang. HoloLens is an augmented-reality head-mounted display that puts “holograms” right in the real world that you can interact with and walk around. When Microsoft first showed off HoloLens earlier this year, one of the first demos was a Minecraft-style game that takes over your living room and blew our writer’s mind. It showed how the technology intermingles with the real world. Now, Minecraft will serve as a centerpiece of the HoloLens platform moving forward.