Court documents revealing details on Game Pass deals and Xbox Store % cut

People here won’t want to hear this but IMO, Xbox are scumbags for even having it a month exclusive. No one should be excited by this.

Would much rather them do a Day 1 on gamepass deals than moneyhat timed exclusivity.

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I wonder how MS feel about their plans being exposed like this…but they had the chance to redact those parts of the documents I guess.

Either way, it puts pressure on Sony to follow suit. Big win for developers all around.

2021 for Stalker 2, I don’t see that being the case anymore.

Honestly, while it is, I feel like this is so much more than just putting more money in the hands of developers. This feels like a powerplay move on what is effectively Sony’s bread and butter. Sony’s entire business revolves around that 30% cut, it’s a business model based around expanding the console install base as much as possible with 1st party content, and then making bank on the 30% cut. They will not be keen on cutting that down to 12% so easily.

As a result of that, if Microsoft grows a substantial Series S|Series X install base (60-70 million) 3rd party devs are going to be heavily incentivized to not sign onto any 3rd party exclusivity deals with Sony.

Like to me this reads as directly going after what Sony seems to be planning on tipping their hat on this gen, which is 3rd party timed exclusives.

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Im thourghly suprised these docs dont show a price drop for making products play anywhere

I could be misunderstanding your point. I was thinking xCloud could be persistently a feature of the highest tier of Gamepass. So in a sense, always tied to Gamepass.

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Yeah, it is always going to be linked to Game Pass ultimate, but we will also see xCloud separately as another option.

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I knew it was too good to be true xd

It is already potential huge news. Also interesting for all developers who potentially wanted to make a native app for mobile of their games, MS is basically saying that they will take much less from their games if they put it on xCloud. So less work for the devs, and more revenue to them too.

Basically, MS is sweetening the deal, saying you don’t need to put more money into developing a brand new port for mobile, and in exchange you get the majority of the revenues.

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I think he missed all those third-party exclusives from Sony.

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Yeah, he is definitely missing the bigger picture.

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Unless they accomplish a datacentre+cdn network similar to what exists for a youtube/video like service this won’t be offered separately soon.

This means that we need to keep an eye on Azure investments too. This is along term infra move too much like when they started working towards starting Azure.

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Why?

If it does end up being 12% for all types incl DLCs and mtx - and not just game purchases - that will be eye popping as an announcement.

Maybe this could be an E3 announcement. I know E3 is a consumer-focused event, but it’s still hugely followed by the dev community for obvious reasons.

I just don’t see it releasing this year at all. We’ve yet to see actual gameplay, that does go for other games too but I just have this feeling it’s not coming. But I would love to be wrong, I quite look forward to this.

Microsoft really wants to be that “unskippable” platform for games.

Day by day it becomes harder not to invest your games on the platform.

I’m sure Square is starting to regret missing the growth of Xbox with their games now.

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I sincerely think ppl like Zhugex and others in the media have not understood what MS is doing. This is amazingly aggressive shit towards user and dev acquisition for current and future platforms.

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