In a bid to win over developers and bring more PC games to their store, starting on August 1, Microsoft will only take a 12% cut on game sales as compared to 30% which is the industry norm.
These changes are only for the PC version of the store and not the Xbox store as their business model is entirely different from each other.
“As part of our commitment to empower every PC game creator to achieve more, starting on August 1 the developer share of Microsoft Store PC games sales net revenue will increase to 88%, from 70%.” said Matt Booty, head of Xbox Games studios, in a recent blog post, “a clear, no-strings-attached revenue share means developers can bring more games to more players and find greater commercial success from doing so.”
Microsoft is not the first to make this move as Epic Games Store offers 88% of the revenue to publishers and developers on its store, while Valve’s Steam charges 30% of the revenue which is then reduced to 25% after sales worth $10 million and 20% after sales worth $15 million. However, Valve also allows publishers and developers to generate unlimited Steam redemption keys from which Valve takes no cuts, essentially allowing the developers to keep 100% of the revenue generated from selling the said keys. All in all, both Windows Store and EGS still lack plenty of social and QoL features catered to help both developers and gamers alike which possibly explains why charging just 12% might be better in comparison.
Microsoft is reportedly redesigning their Windows Store which would be more open and offer a better user experience and will accept more applications based around WIN32 Format (.exe / .msi) rather than strictly UWP. Microsoft will also allow developers to push updates from apps themselves rather than relying on Windows Store.
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