Microsoft shook up the PC gaming business this week with the announcement that it was reducing the price it takes from sport gross sales on the Home windows retailer. On the floor, it’s a welcome transfer, with Microsoft matching the 12 % reduce that Epic Video games takes, and placing extra strain on Valve, which nonetheless takes a 30 % reduce on most Steam purchases. However the reduce can be a tactical transfer: Microsoft desires to assist strain Apple, and this week’s adjustments may play a task within the greater app retailer battles kicking off subsequent week.
Microsoft’s announcement comes simply days earlier than an enormous courtroom trial between Epic Video games and Apple, and simply because the EU has discovered points with Apple’s guidelines claiming the corporate has a “dominant place available in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps by means of its App Retailer.” Microsoft has been quietly backing Epic Video games’ motion towards Apple, and not-so-quietly calling for regulators to analyze the App Retailer. If both effort is profitable, it might immediately profit Microsoft’s software program enterprise, in addition to its ambitions for cloud gaming.
Epic founder Tim Sweeney has an extended historical past with Microsoft, and it’s solely just lately that their pursuits have aligned. Sweeney famously lashed out at Microsoft’s efforts to manage the Home windows software program ecosystem with its retailer and Common Home windows Platform (UWP) initiative. Microsoft has since walked a lot of this again, and the corporate’s extra open mannequin for HoloLens noticed Sweeney share the stage with the software program maker and pledge Epic Video games’ help for Microsoft’s combined actuality headsets.
Apple’s App Retailer, which is on the middle of the present lawsuit, has additionally been a selected sore level for Microsoft. After dropping out to iOS and Android with its Home windows Cellphone efforts, Microsoft has been combating its personal battles towards Apple’s App Retailer for years. After hitting out on the App Retailer with its personal Home windows retailer coverage adjustments final yr, Microsoft will take any probability it might to assist drive favorable charges, particularly if it’s nicely timed. The software program maker tried to launch its SkyDrive (now OneDrive) app for iPhones again in 2012, however obtained locked in a battle with Apple over a 30 % reduce of income for cloud storage purchases within the app. It was a check for Microsoft’s actual money cow Workplace on iOS.
Microsoft has additionally been battling to launch its xCloud sport streaming service on iOS, the place it might like to maintain the 30 % reduce it makes on sport purchases and in-app transactions on cloud variations of Xbox video games. Apple continues to be blocking providers like xCloud or Stadia, and Microsoft has needed to create an online model to work across the restrictions.
Whereas Microsoft hasn’t lodged any formal complaints about Apple, the corporate’s chief authorized officer, Brad Smith, reportedly met with the Home Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee final yr to transient the panel on considerations across the App Retailer and its charges. This was across the identical time Apple had commissioned a examine that argued its 30 % reduce was an business customary. It’s laborious to take a look at Microsoft’s PC gaming price reduce this week and never see it as a well-timed push that can assist spotlight the disparity between PC and cellular app shops.
Microsoft’s app retailer on Home windows isn’t an enormous income driver for the corporate, and it already had a 15 % reduce on apps forward of those PC sport adjustments. Gaming is probably the most profitable a part of any app retailer, however a lot of sport builders don’t at the moment publish their video games on the Home windows retailer. That makes Microsoft’s reduce to 12 % wise enterprise if it, and even Epic Video games, desires to leverage the adjustments to argue for App Retailer overhauls elsewhere. It additionally helps advance Microsoft and Epic Video games’ narrative that PCs and smartphones are general-purpose computing platforms with fairer app retailer fashions.
Microsoft also announced this fee change, which doesn’t start until August, without any solid promises about improving its ailing Windows store. It feels rushed, with no obvious benefit to consumers in ways that matter, like cheaper games or an overhauled store. The fee cut also doesn’t apply to Xbox console games, and the timing feels like it’s also designed to prepare for future questions over the Xbox 30 percent cut by positioning PC differently.
Microsoft has previously defended its 30 percent cut for Xbox digital game sales. “Game consoles are specialized devices optimized for a particular use,” said Rima Alaily, deputy general counsel at Microsoft, last year. Alaily argues that the “business model for game consoles is very different to the ecosystem around PCs or phones,” because Microsoft subsidizes the hardware and consoles “are vastly outnumbered in the marketplace by PCs and phones.”
But while Microsoft has been more protective of the 30 percent cut collected on the Xbox, Epic Games seems happy to leave it in place. An Epic Games executive revealed in a court deposition this week that the company has never sought to negotiate with Microsoft to avoid using its commerce engine on Xbox. “We are a significant revenue generator for all three of those platforms [Xbox, PlayStation, Switch], probably in the top five, you know, revenue sources for them,” admits Joe Kreiner, Epic’s vice president of business development. “So they have a vested interest in promoting Fortnite. We receive significant store placement that we do not have to pay for.”
The same court filing revealed that Fortnite’s cash cow is PlayStation, not iOS, so there’s little incentive for Epic Games to question platforms where it makes most of its money, and receives special marketing deals.
European commissioner Margrethe Vestager revealed the commission is looking at Apple’s policies around games on the App Store. “We also take an interest in the gaming app market,” said Vestager, responding to a question about the money involved in gaming apps on the App Store. “That’s really early days when it comes to that.”
