MSFT Microsoft Corporation

By Sarah E. Needleman 

Videogames are a go-to tool for tech-savvy teachers looking to engage students. Now Microsoft Corp. thinks schools are ready to pay to add one of the most popular games ever to the curriculum.

Microsoft this summer plans to launch a classroom edition of its building-block game "Minecraft," which it acquired in 2014 when it paid $2.5 billion for Mojang AB. The company is planning to charge $5 a student annually and is figuring out per-school licensing fees for larger educational institutions.

The potential payoff could be significant. About 50.2 million students are expected to be enrolled in U.S. public schools this year, from prekindergarten through high school, with roughly a further 4.9 million in private schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Microsoft isn't targeting specific grades or usage, said Matt Booty, who oversees "Minecraft" as a vice president for Microsoft's games studio. The game would be available to teachers, principals and administrators, from elementary school through college.

"We would like to have all those avenues open," Mr. Booty said. He declined to discuss sales projections.

Spending on educational software and digital resources in the U.S. for prekindergarten through 12th-grade classrooms reached $8.38 billion in 2014, up 5.1% from a year earlier and up 12% since 2010, according to the latest data from the Software & Information Industry Association. The association doesn't break out sales of educational-games software.

Videogames have found their way into schools for decades. "The Oregon Trail," a 1971 computer game that challenged players to survive a wagon ride across 1800s America, came bundled with school computers. More modern hits such as "The Sims" are used to help students solve problems and collaborate. The physics-based gameplay of "Angry Birds" has been a popular teaching tool.

In "Minecraft," players are digital architects with endless space to build any object imaginable, from a replica of the Taj Mahal to a medieval castle or even entire cities. In sophisticated cases, builders incorporate real-world tools such as a working mobile phone that streams video.

Since its 2009 release, the game has sold more than 70 million copies for personal computers, smartphones and consoles such as Microsoft's Xbox One. A mobile version consistently ranks among the top paid apps world-wide on Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s stores.

The coming "Minecraft: Education Edition" includes special features for the classroom. For instance, teachers can customize projects, track students' progress and save their creations. Students get personal accounts tied to their school identification cards and can share digital photos of their works.

"Minecraft" is made up of "great material, but it's supplementary," said Mike Kaspar, a senior policy analyst at the National Education Association, which represents public-school teachers and personnel. "There's no way it can cover what teachers need to cover as far as content goes in a classroom," he added. "It would be a great product for an after-school program."

Proponents, though, say "Minecraft" hones an array of skills, including critical thinking, geometry and teamwork.

Joel Levin taught computer technology for a decade in New York elementary schools. In 2011, he co-founded TeacherGaming LLC, which developed a modified version of the game called "MinecraftEdu" to make it easier for teachers to incorporate it in their lessons.

"The applications of 'Minecraft' are incredibly diverse," he said. To date, his Finland-based startup has sold copies to more than 7,000 schools world-wide, generating about $3 million in revenue.

TeacherGaming in October agreed to sell "MinecraftEdu" to Microsoft for an undisclosed sum. The deal is pending but expected to go through. Microsoft used the so-called mod version to create the new educator edition.

One of the biggest hurdles in selling "MinecraftEdu" to schools has been "getting teachers over the fear factor of using a tool in the classroom that kids are more familiar with than they are," Mr. Levin said. "They feel like the student."

Schools, meanwhile, have cumbersome approval processes for purchasing software, strict rules around safety and privacy, and outdated computers that aren't powerful enough to run modern games software, Mr. Levin said.

Microsoft doesn't plan to advertise the new edition beyond promoting it at teacher conventions. The company intends to announce the new edition at a conference Tuesday. Its biggest challenge might be getting educators to pay for software when so many classroom-friendly games already exist free online or come bundled with textbooks.

Bethany Petty, a high-school teacher in Park Hills, Mo., uses free software to motivate her students. Once she spent $2 on a game her entire classroom could use, which she paid for out of her own pocket, she said.

"I would have no problem going to my principal" to buy software, she said, but finding good games that cost little or nothing has always been "pretty easy."

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 19, 2016 06:14 ET (11:14 GMT)

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