The news about Microsoft’s possible purchase of Mojang, the studio famous for their popular hit game Minecraft took many by surprise because the news seemed to come out of nowhere. While opinions are still divided about whether it is a positive step or not, everyone’s waiting to see what will happen.

Now sources are saying the Microsoft are preparing a press release to announce that they have successfully bought out the Swedish studio in a deal supposedly worth about $2.5 billion. According to what we’ve heard the announcement will be made on Monday.

Previous updates on this story have told that Notch, the man behind Minecraft and Mojang was the person who started the talks with Microsoft months back. This was despite Notch having a reputation for loving the indie game scene and not really getting along well with larger companies and their interests, having once called Windows 8 a negative thing for indie gaming and famously pulled out of an Oculus-based version of Minecraft because the VR company was purchased by Facebook.

For now, all fans of Minecraft and Mojang’s other games can do is wait and see…

Last night’s news about a possible Microsoft buyout of the indie developer responsible for Minecraft, Mojang sparked quite a reaction last night. A lot of people do not seem to relish the thought.

Now Bloomsberg have reported that far from Microsoft approaching Mojang as was assumed, founder Notch approached Microsoft first. The report states that Notch “reached out to Microsoft a few months ago, based on a positive working relationship on Minecraft for Xbox,” and that details have been being hammered out ever since that time. If the deal did go through it would also see Notch leaving Mojang entirely after assisting with the transition.

The news comes as a bit of a shock given that Notch has a reputation for being big on indies but not as much on bigger companies, having once famously pulled out of a Minecraft/Oculus deal after the VR company was acquired by Facebook. Personally I am still a tiny bit sceptical, but then $2 billion is a lot of money and you can never really tell.

All we can do now is wait and see whether there’s any truth to the news flying about.

In the midst of the Bukkit episode, it didn’t seem possible for another shockwave to hit the Minecraft community. But it has, and from a completely unexpected direction in some ways.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that according to “a person with knowledge of the matter” Microsoft have been in some serious discussion with the makers of the sandbox game, Mojang with the intent to acquire them for themselves.

The deal, said to be worth around $2 billion could be signed as early as this week. It comes as a bit of a surprise given what else has been happening recently though.

Minecraft is undoubtedly a very popular game and it’s easy to see why Microsoft would be interested. However, Mojang founder Notch has always been fairly wary of venture capital and big business and even once criticised Microsoft’s Windows 8 as being very bad for indie gaming.

All I can say is that the idea of a Microsoft-owned Minecraft makes me feel very… uneasy.

When we heard that Volition was kicking off PAX this weekend and would be announcing their new project, we knew there was a good chance it was going to be related to the Saints Row franchise. Especially when the voice of one of its characters was there to help present the panel and then later artwork surfaced of a ouija board that contained the prominent fleur-de-lis image of the games’ titular gang.

So it comes as no surprise that the project turns out to be a new standalone expansion to the Saints Row 4 game – Saints Row 4: Gat Out of Hell has gone from the superheroics of the last main game to the supernatural. The two-player co-op sees Johnny Gat and Kinzie of the Saints sucked to Hell by ouija board to battle demons and eventually face Satan himself to rescue the Boss.

The game’s version of Hell will be half the size of SR4’s Steelport and will feature some new weapons which in true Saints style, are just plain bonkers. For example one of them is called Arm Chairmageddon and is basically a La-Z-Boy recliner with guns. Others draw more from the ‘hell and damnation’ side of the game’s style, including the Locust Gun.

Gat Out of Hell will be sold separately for $19.95 in North America and will be released for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on Jan. 27, 2015. The expansion will also be part of an upcoming re-release of Saints Row 4 called Saints Row 4: Re-Elected for PS4 and Xbox One. No word yet about prices or release dates for European versions.

Minecraft was announced to be coming to the Playstation 4 months ago, finally bringing a little bit of the sandbox action to fans of Sony. Unfortunately it seems like they might need to wait a little bit longer: Sony have failed it for certification.

4J Studios, who are responsible for the console ports of the game passed on the game to Sony for review on August 12th and have since tweeted out that Sony have found problems in the game that need fixing before it gets cleared for release on either the Playstation 4. They are also fixing bugs in the Xbox One and Vita versions currently.

Sony found some issues we have to fix in their final test of #MinecraftPS4 🙁 We’re fixing, but we need to go through the process again.

— 4J Studios (@4JStudios) August 20, 2014

This makes it seem likely that Minecraft PS4 Version will likely miss its original August release window. As of writing we don’t know when the new release date will be.