Microsoft's willingness to pay a whopping $2 billion for Mojang, maker of the Minecraft computer game, might make more sense than meets the eye: The software giant would be getting an entire virtual world, which could prove a lot more valuable than a mere game company.
The off-the-charts price -- more than twice as high per dollar of revenue than the current market valuations of Zynga, maker of FarmVille, and King Digital Entertainment, the Candy Crush Saga developer -- is apparently a magic number for Mojang founder Markus "Notch" Persson. "My price is two billion dollars. Give me two billion dollars, and I'll endorse your crap," he tweetedback in 2012. A developer first and businessman second, Persson doesn't think in terms of multiples and revenue. "We try to make games we want to make for the sake of making fun games and not necessarily to make a profit," he said in a 2013 interview,
