Last year, Epic Games sued Apple over being kicked off the App store due to not using Apple’s payment system for microtransactions. The lawsuit is still ongoing but some documents recently filed. These documents give some pretty interesting details about Microsoft and its plan for the Xbox store.
Originally reported by the Verge, it seems that Microsoft is planning to reduce their cut on the Xbox store. Should this happen, they will only take 12% instead of the industry-standard 30%. This means that developers with products in the store will end up making more money. Despite how great this sounds, there is, as of writing, a major catch. According to the Verge, a Microsoft spokesperson told them, “We have no plans to change the revenue share for console games at this time.”
This price cut sounds great for developers but it appears there is a catch involving streaming rights. In the full document, the following quote can be found:
One of the biggest selling points for Xbox consoles is Game Pass and its cloud streaming counterpart xCloud. Microsoft’s insistence on having the streaming rights of games in exchange for a reduction of their cut shows how serious they are about cloud streaming. It seems they’ve learned from NVIDIA’s mistake of putting games on their cloud streaming service without permission. By doing this, Microsoft is ensuring that third-party games on xCloud aren’t unexpectedly removed.
