Techtorial: Earlier today, Google surprised us by launching an eight-bit version of its Maps service. Right now, we're showing you some of the easter eggs found by keen players doing the 'quest'.
Epic Games winning its cases against both Apple and Google is shaping the way forward for the future of mobile gaming.
I feel alot of mobile gamers are kids which will at some point probably turn to console or pc. Mobile gaming just doesn't cut it for me.
tru dat, but i feel like it's gonna be a lot more viable for people who travel a lot or don't want to invest in a full gaming rig. Think of it as a Switch on drugs, with a LOT more room for free illegal downloads.
from eXputer "These multi-billion-dollar cases mean more savings for both devs and consumers. Public reactions to these lawsuits have been mixed, with some in favor/against the points being made"
They lost one, won one, and are about to go do sony. Yeah, Yeah, so where is the win part for gamers? This is about industry dividend regulation and enforcement, and has nothing to do with gamers (Studios will take a larger cut before you get a discount). The win and gratitude should be diplayed by the creators/publishers; way, WAY before the cosumers or a game jurno. Good Grief. Most of this is correct, but who it is really aimed at is misleading in its inclusivity as some kind of shoe-in for future savings/discounts for gamers.
The argument is pretty easy for why it's a win for the consumer
More competition often equals reduced prices for consumers which is not the case here since Sony established the price point for the whole industry due to the price parity clause.
Here's an easy example of what could happen if it went through.
MS wants to acquire more market share and decided to reduce the 30% cut to 20% for publishers willing to reduce their price by 5%.
Sony would have to follow suit
or feel that their consumers would be okay with paying more for a Playstation product (like often the case for Nintendo).
Right now this scenario can't work because the publisher would have to offer the same price on Playstation despite them still paying 30% due to the price parity clause So there's no pressure for MS to reduce their 30% cut.
Now you're just arguing for the biggest corporations model. Not everyone can afford to follow that model. Some rely on game sales not subs.
@Mkis007
I fail to see what my comment has to do with sales versus subscriptions.
In my example, MS reduces their 30% cut (the same one Sony charges) to 20% because they want ppl to buy Xbox instead of publisher.
MS gives the 10% reduction to publishers who will reduce their Xbox price by 5% (so consumers pay less and publishers still make 5% more profit on a sale.
We already know from real life that Activision had a deal with MS to reduce their 30% platform fee to 20% for Call of Duty. That did not result in lower prices for Xbox gamers. It only mean a wider profit margin for Activision. In addition, it did not result in Sony having to follow suit and lower its platforming fees. Activision still wins because paying 10% more to triple your sales is a win. Here, the actual end users (gamers) are not made better or worse just because companies are negotiating platforming fees. In fact the only way for competition to reach the consumer is for Activision to offer its game cheaper on the platform it pays less for... which it obviously doesn't (you know because its actually the PUBLISHER who sets the price). Ubisoft already cut the price of Avatar. Games are constantly on sale on PSN without being on sale on Xbox and vice versa.
There are some potential arguments to make but you don't make any of them and you conflate corporate welfare with consumer advocacy. In a real world example, it turns out Sony does not have the power to force Microsoft to charge a higher platforming fee. You made it up. Or you were lied to and you didn't do your own research. You have a real concern over competition but misrepresented it in your example and made us all worse off.
Xbox would be more likely to cannibalize sales for subscriptions. Especially if it would get rid of the competition who does not have the ability to play with fire.
@eonjay
Of course Activision would not reduce the price on Xbox due to price parity clause.
Meaning that if Activision would reduce the price on Xbox ( because it’s cheaper to produce) they would have an obligation to match the price on PlayStation ( despite costing more).
https://www.ign.com/article...
a win for consumers 🤣 … you lost me at reduced prices but read a bit more and the cut fee to publisher doesn't benefit consumers on anything at all dont kid yourself!
@peterbloodyonion
What i fail to see is how can MS console exclusive have the same price as sony exclusive? If you say MS reduces the cut at least do it in their console exclusive first so we can actually see that they actually do it, not wishful thinking because of parity. More competition is good? yeah i agree but not all because MS is the one who indroduced pay to play online and the others follow it. As long i dont see any price reduce in games i dont see any benefit in consumers period..
@pete
I read that IGN article you linked, and nowhere does it mention “price parity,” console cut, or anything of the sort. Just a clause in the Sony contract not to make the RE Village game worse on PS. Stop making shit up.
The case is against monopolies.
When you have a monopoly, companies can charge as much as they want knowing they have no competition.
If you are able to buy PlayStation games from places other than the PS Store, then Sony will lower their prices to make people continue to buy games from their store.
It's not rocket science
Simce when do digital cards get markdowns. To this day the card for breath of the wild is full price.
The vast majority of third-party content is already not exclusive to one platform. Leading a market does not necessarily mean monopolizing it, especially when the content is generally available on several platforms. What is your evidence for monopoly?
I agree we the consumers won’t see half’s penny from this it’s just the developers getting the fair share of their hard work it’s not like all of the sudden we will see digital games prices go down 10% from their already equal to physical games prices.
From a business viewpoint, especially small developers these wins are a good thing. But what I’m curious about is the fallout. How would this affect game prices down the road? Will big corp just pass it to the consumer?
Hopefully this will lead to better profits and discounts for the consumer.
I agree with sony should sell digital stuff elsewhere besides psn. I used to get some good deals on Amazon. The amount their being sued for is kind of an issue though. Maybe them selling elsewhere is a win there shouldn't be a dollar figure attached to that. Imo.
This
They should just be told "you have to make digital keys available anywhere".
You can now but I don't think it's official. Eg I bought GOW Rag digital key off CDKeys.
I put in the key, it was legit, it worked, zero issues, but I've noticed the store doesn't register it as a purchased game.
I've played the game, completed the game, but PSN still marks it as a game I can buy.
I think its more game sales would increase. For instance, while you could still buy keys off Amazon for ps3 I bought dead Nation. It was like 10 bucks on psn while it was 3.99 on Amazon. Now it was the same price when it was on sale through psn , but at the time it just wasn't on sale(through psn) when I wanted to buy it. So it's not a decrease in game prices to me its just an increase on the times you can find games on sale at good prices.
That's a win for gamers no matter how you look at it. More chances to find a game you want on sale through different outlets. It's no different then buying physical games through different outlets depending who got the best price =Win
A win for gamers or game publishers? Publishers don’t want to reduce prices. They just want the stores taking a 30% cut on game sales. If you can side load games on PlayStation, you will PlayStation price increase and turn the console into another gaming PC. No thanks.
Publishers don't want to reduce prices because they have to compensate for the 30% commissions. Once commissions get reduced, they will reduce the price they set to compensate for them but keep the game price the same.
An example: a hypothetical game costs $50, $20 extra is put on the price tag to compensate for the commission. With a lower commission rate, the game can continue to be $50, but now you can set the compensation rate to $15 instead of $20.
This way you're making the same amount of profit, but the customer pays less. Hope this makes sense.
Three years after Fortnite-maker Epic Games sued Apple and Google for allegedly running illegal app store monopolies, Epic has a win. The jury in Epic v. Google has just delivered its verdict — and it found that Google turned its Google Play app store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly.
oooo shiiiit
well, there ya go
but i think the biggest issue are the judges in these cases.
most of them have no clue about all them things.
ii wonder what the judge will decide Epic actually "won" or what the out come is.
Why are you saying the judge have no cases?
I think the judges shows lots of clairity that in a duality market (APPLE and Android) there's no competition when both are already agreeing on the price.
Do you think there would be deals if Wallmart was the only store where you could buy food?
How would the argument of "but there's competition between Cookies and cereal brands" would hold up when Wallmart could decide that each provider must pay a 30% comission just to display product in store?
There's already tons od laws to make sure that there's not only 1 physical store brand and that store owners can't be in cahoot with competition in order to fix price so why would this be different for Virtual storefront?
i didnt say that.
read properly next time.
and the digital market is more complex than supernarkets.
"Do you think there would be deals if Wallmart was the only store where you could buy food?"
This isn't even the same types of argument, you have a variety of different devices you can get content on, like Apple pr Google or PC or consoles, all these things plus more compete with each other.
The only winner in this decision are Epic, Microsoft and other people who are already rich. All these greedy companies are using the law to steal profits from each other and it's going to be the consumers who pay more.
All these devices we use are heavily subsidized by the profits these platform holders make from selling peoples products. If you think Epic is going to start charging less for their MTX now or whatever your crazy, consumers are not going to get anything back from the winners here. All consumers get is the privilege to pay more for devices.
Edit:
"Wallmart could decide that each provider must pay a 30% comission just to display product in store?"
Walmart does take a cut of every sale in their stores....thats how they make money. They also sell shelf space, the products that are are in the center instead of the top or the bottom pay to be there and to have higher visibility and easier access. They also sell access because obviously they don't have enough space for every brands products.
Using your Walmart analogy, how long do you think Walmart would stay in business if they just let anyone walk into their store and sell things without helping to pay for the upkeep of the stores and other costs? They wouldn't that's why things don't work like that.
That is what Epic wants, they want to use these devices with out paying to help maintain them.
@Gold _Drake
Sorry bad writting from my part I meant to say Why do you think Judges have no clues?
@Einhander1972
Last I checked tons of small developpers and consummer association complained about the 30% tax cut that Sony Steam, Google, Apple are charging so why do you say only Epic benefit from that decisision is beyond me. Heck I recall this article making the headline recently
https://www.gamesindustry.b...
As for Walmart Upkeep, I would like to remind you that it's Wallmart and other store who need to cut in THEIR profit margin if they want to match price seen in other stores and not the other way around like in the digital market where Game publisher must sign price parity clause to please Google, Apple, Valve and Sony
https://www.linklaters.com/...
https://www.ign.com/article...
Thst isn the issue here. Thr issue ws the secret deals Google was doing to lower its cut for certain big apps publishers and only them and the fact that a requiremenf for said deals was nof helping epic games sefup its own mobile store.
"Last I checked tons of small developpers and consummer association complained about the 30% tax cut that Sony Steam, Google, Apple are charging so why do you say only Epic benefit from that decisision is beyond me. Heck I recall this article making the headline recent"
Yes, yeah developers and other people who are selling things to you may benefit but the main benefit is these large companies who want to bypass fees.
But at the end of the day they are not going to start charging you less, they are going to charge the same but get more profits.
And the link you posted about the case against Sony is filed by Alex Neil a certified con artist who doesn't care about consumers they just want a huge personal payout.
And as for parity clauses again the money is going to come from the consumers one way or another, these people are fighting to take each others profits, if the parity clauses are blocked we'll pay more for hardware.
The idea that any of these changes are going to make things cheaper for the consumer are a joke, the only thing that changes is who gets the profits.
And as for Walmart, you missed what I was saying Walmart may lower the price on an item but they just charge the manufacturer of that item more to stock it on the shelves.
In some ways the digital stores are better because they don't charge an upfront fee to put an item on the store they instead charge a fee per sale. Which if they have to reduce the fee that charge for sales they would likely recoup that money by charging a fee to sell something on the ap store. Which also would benefit the rich companies over small developers who would be able to pay upfront fees that smaller developers may not.
Which is the reason Walmart only stocks the major brands and not a bunch of start up small brands, because the major brands can pay for shelf space.
Don’t hold your breath yet there’s a long road ahead with the appeals process then the Supreme Court will have the last words and I don’t see this court going against the big corporations earnings.
I’m been known to be wrong some times and truly hope I am on this one
This is terrible news for consumers, while Epic and others get richer we'll now have to pay more for our devices.
How? Android phones like Samsung Galaxy are not subsidized by purchases from Google Play Store. And Google can’t quit on Android because of how much money Google makes from Google search on Android.
Google pays Samsung billions to have their store on Samsung phones.
Samsung also offers it's own store.
Einhander1972
samsung has it's own store but how many know about that store? its like comparing MS store to other well known stores
No. The cases argued were different.
Epic sued Apple for a monopoly over iOS. Apple said iOS competes with Android, MS, Nintendo, Sony, etc for Fortnite. Therefore there is market competition and no monopoly. The judges agreed.
Epic sued Google over a monopoly on android devices. Because Google was found to have shady deals preventing phone manufacturers from putting competing stores on phones as a default app, among other shady dealings, they found google has a monopoly on android marketplaces specifically.
Basically, Apple being a walled garden actually kind of protected them
Android isn’t a walled garden tied to hardware like iOS. Android is like Windows or Linux for PCs. Any phone manufacturer can use Android and any seller can have their own store on Android. But Google used its muscle to tie up 90% marketshare for apps on Android. That’s monopolistic behavior.
Phil and slimey company sitting up and plotting.... expect to hear how Sony is anti-gamer for refusing to have GamePass on their ecosystems they may very well do this to avoid 2027 . I can imagine his email to Satya...."we got them" lol.
I can't really call this a April Fool's joke because it is crazy awesome. Thanks Google team for taking us down memory lane.