Microsoft has revealed that developers are set to get a bigger slice of the revenue split on PC games sold on the Microsoft Store. The change comes as part of the company’s “commitment to PC gaming”, and will come into effect this summer.
We spoke to Microsoft partner director Jason Beaumont about the company’s aims for PC gaming, who told us about the coming update to the Store revenue share. “We’re making some changes to the Store as part of our commitment to PC gaming. We’re gonna make a change to our revenue split […] where publishers will receive 88% of the revenue versus 70% previously”. These changes will be coming into effect this summer, on August 1. “This is a no-strings-attached revenue share change, just as part of our commitment for PC game developers,” Beaumont adds.
Head of Xbox Studios Matt Booty has also spoken about this change in a new blog post, in which he says this is “part of our commitment to empower every PC game creator to achieve more”. He explains that this increase will apply to the “developer share of Microsoft Store PC games sales net revenue”.
Booty similarly says that this “clear, no-strings-attached revenue share means developers can bring more games to more players and find greater commercial success from doing so.”
Revenue share on digital storefronts is a frequent topic of discussion among developers. Just recently, a GDC survey found that only 3% of 3,000 game industry workers polled thought the 30/70 revenue share on digital storefronts is justified. That’s down from 6% the year prior.
This isn’t the first time that Microsoft has mentioned its commitment to PC, with Xbox head Phil Spencer saying last year that it was his aim that first-party games on PC come to “Steam and our store” as Microsoft “built an expectation from our customers”. He explained at the time that, while “there will be little anomalies every so often and because of relationships and certain developers that want to do certain things”, his “goal is: make games as playable by as many people as possible so that this art form continues to grow”.
We also learned other things in our chat with Microsoft, such as that upcoming FPS game Halo Infinite will have cross-play and cross-progression across PC and Xbox, and that Halo: The Master Chief Collection has seen more than ten million players on PC since launch. You can read more at those links, and head to the blog post for more details on how Xbox is approaching PC gaming going forward.