Microsoft recently announced that they’re reducing the revenue share they get from PC games, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing the same for consoles.
In an effort sure to annoy Valve, Microsoft announced last week that developers creating PC games for the Microsoft Store would see their share of sales net revenue improve from 70 percent to 88 percent. This means that, as of 1 August, Microsoft will only take 12 percent, matching the revenue split for PC developers over at the Epic Games Store.
A clear, no-strings-attached revenue share means developers can bring more games to more players and find greater commercial success from doing so.
For comparison, Valve’s Steam platform currently takes 30 percent by default and that percentage drops as the game’s sales profits increase beyond $10 million (a number most indie games struggle to reach over their entire lifespan).
If you were hoping the same improvement might be true for console devs, especially after documents revealed during preparation for the Epic vs. Apple trial (finally starting today) seemed to show that Microsoft was also looking into reducing their share of console game revenue (currently at 30 percent), you’re out of luck. A recent statement by a Microsoft spokesperson to The Verge suggests that the document was either wrong or Microsoft changed their mind.
We will not be updating the revenue split for console publishers.
Dang.