With Fortnite, the recently announced Zombie/Tower Defence game from Epic, the developers took a definite inspiration from Minecraft. Jens Bergensten, lead developer on Minecraft (he took over the project in December), looks forward to seeing where else inspiration their legacy can lead big developers with big budgets.
"I'm kind of looking forward to bigger companies taking on the same kind of genre, if you should call it that. Because I think it could make quite cool games, you know, the sandbox environment."
But one thing the bigger companies are unlikely to ever be able to replicate is the openness that comes from being a small studio. "One thing that I like about Mojang is that we're allowed to communicate directly to everybody. We don't really have much secrets," Bergensten said.
In the same interview, Berhensten talks about integrating mods, games within games, taking over from Notch and a lot more. A definite read if you want to know about the future of Minecraft.