Matching Epic, Microsoft is slashing what it takes from developers to 12%

ManofGod said:
The one problem with the Xbox and the Windows Games store is this: They cap the speed at which you can download games. The best I get is about 280Mbps on my Xbox One X or through the Windows XBox app and this is on a Gigabit Internet connection. And nope, the problem is not on my end, unfortunately. :(
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I got 535 megabits per second out of a launch edition xbone after I wired my master bedroom with ethernet while downloading a system update. Games typically do 280-350 megabits per second for me. it might depend on what part of the country you live in. I live in AR ffs and saw almost double what you do once.
 
The MS store is jank as hell. Too many weird instances where a game won't load, won't properly toggle to fullscreen (hence HDR and vsync won't work correctly), and of course the fact that the files are hidden away and can't be modded or tweaked without a lot of work.

I love the idea of Gamepass, and MS's own games tend to run pretty well from it. Everything else? Not so much.
 
Wade88 said:
I got 535 megabits per second out of a launch edition xbone after I wired my master bedroom with ethernet while downloading a system update. Games typically do 280-350 megabits per second for me. it might depend on what part of the country you live in. I live in AR ffs and saw almost double what you do once.
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I get close to maxing out my gigabit whenever I get something from windows game store, or anything from microsoft's servers, same for EGS, Origin, and UPlay. The only store I use that I don't max out my download speed is Steam which people claim is because it's heavily compressed and using dependent on CPU, but it never comes close to maxing my CPU out either so I think they just don't have as much bandwidth going to me.
I still avoid the MS store because of all the other issues though. I would tolerate most of the issues, but the weird shit they do with making files undeletable I'm not willing to deal with.
 
Unless it is a game I want then I won't buy anything from the Microsoft Store. Though, it is good to see Microsoft reducing their cut from the developers.
 
AceGoober said:
Unless it is a game I want then I won't buy anything from the Microsoft Store. Though, it is good to see Microsoft reducing their cut from the developers.
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I bought a bunch of play anywhere games a couple of years ago.
 
Microsoft's own titles generally work fine from their store. Gears 1/4/5, Ori 1/2, Sea of Thieves, Forza, etc. They were probably designed with the whole UWP thing in mind. They're still apt to bomb immediately when you launch them (check your crashdumps folder), but I've otherwise had minimal troubles with them. The major issues come from the titles from other devs. Especially if it's a title you know you're going to need to tinker with ini's and such.
 
sharknice said:
I get close to maxing out my gigabit whenever I get something from windows game store, or anything from microsoft's servers, same for EGS, Origin, and UPlay. The only store I use that I don't max out my download speed is Steam which people claim is because it's heavily compressed and using dependent on CPU, but it never comes close to maxing my CPU out either so I think they just don't have as much bandwidth going to me.
I still avoid the MS store because of all the other issues though. I would tolerate most of the issues, but the weird shit they do with making files undeletable I'm not willing to deal with.
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The issue with Steam is that all games are packaged and deployed at the discretion of the developer. The Microsoft Store has a uniform deployment scheme across all games which ironically is changing in the future. You also sometimes need to manually change the server location you're connecting to in Steam. It will often pick Atlanta or Houston for me when Miami is the closest.
Domingo said:
Microsoft's own titles generally work fine from their store. Gears 1/4/5, Ori 1/2, Sea of Thieves, Forza, etc. They were probably designed with the whole UWP thing in mind. They're still apt to bomb immediately when you launch them (check your crashdumps folder), but I've otherwise had minimal troubles with them. The major issues come from the titles from other devs. Especially if it's a title you know you're going to need to tinker with ini's and such.
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Not always. I have had plenty of issues with Forza Apex, Forza Horizon 3, Gears Ultimate, and Gears 4. They have gotten better, though, as I have not had any issues with Horizon 4, Forza 7, or Gears 5. Aside from, of course, it deciding to download the entire game again whenever there is a patch and reserve double the amount of space on my drive...
 
Armenius said:
The issue with Steam is that all games are packaged and deployed at the discretion of the developer. The Microsoft Store has a uniform deployment scheme across all games which ironically is changing in the future. You also sometimes need to manually change the server location you're connecting to in Steam. It will often pick Atlanta or Houston for me when Miami is the closest.

Not always. I have had plenty of issues with Forza Apex, Forza Horizon 3, Gears Ultimate, and Gears 4. They have gotten better, though, as I have not had any issues with Horizon 4, Forza 7, or Gears 5. Aside from, of course, it deciding to download the entire game again whenever there is a patch and reserve double the amount of space on my drive...
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I have experimented with that. The one closest to me is actually slower than some further away.
 
I had problems with Gears 5 being choppy when dynamic resolution scale was enabled. Lot of people reported this and I'm not sure it was ever fixed. This was on the Steam version.

I played through on my main machine and beat the game and it was perfect (because I could lock to the refresh rate) but on my spare machine I wanted to gain some performance and dynamic resolution was totally broken (would cause massive mouse lag and stutter).
 
ManofGod said:
The one problem with the Xbox and the Windows Games store is this: They cap the speed at which you can download games. The best I get is about 280Mbps on my Xbox One X or through the Windows XBox app and this is on a Gigabit Internet connection. And nope, the problem is not on my end, unfortunately. :(
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Even if you have 2 Xbox’s sitting right next to each other connected to each other with a gigabit cable, you will only get about 280mb/s (lowercase mb) between the 2 of them using network transfer. I think it’s more of limit of an interface or something inside the console.
 
I’m fine with Steam or Apple or google taking 30%. Why does the platform itself not deserve to be compensated? What kind of audience would these game developers have otherwise?

The reason Epic charges 12% is probably because they can’t justify a value of 30% to the developers. What’s it worth to a developer to be on the biggest platform with high customer satisfaction? About 30% I would say.
 
westrock2000 said:
I’m fine with Steam or Apple or google taking 30%. Why does the platform itself not deserve to be compensated? What kind of audience would these game developers have otherwise?

The reason Epic charges 12% is probably because they can’t justify a value of 30% to the developers. What’s it worth to a developer to be on the biggest platform with high customer satisfaction? About 30% I would say.
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The whole "store cut" thing is kind of a red herring whenever this circular debate crops up. The fee each store charges is mostly an expression of their market size, combined with purchasing tendency of its users.

A publisher with the basic deductive sense found in 3rd graders understands 70% of a pie is more pie than 88% of a slice. On a digital good like game keys that have no additional cost to generate 10 additional keys or 10 million more, as a publisher/developer you go where the biggest market of likely buyers resides to capture the most pie to ROI your project.

The "bigger cut for the developers" oversimplification by Tim Sweeney & friends relies on casual observers not really seeing the whole, nuanced picture. Meanwhile many people that may believe the "bigger cut, help the developers" idea will also go and buy cheap keys from greymarket sites, something that actually screws developers worse than piracy due to frequent chargebacks in the supply chain of those keys.

Buy from a store you trust is all I can say. GoG, Steam, Epic, wherever. MS still has some work to do to build back trust.
 
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westrock2000 said:
Even if you have 2 Xbox’s sitting right next to each other connected to each other with a gigabit cable, you will only get about 280mb/s (lowercase mb) between the 2 of them using network transfer. I think it’s more of limit of an interface or something inside the console.
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Based upon what others have said here, I think it is because of my location but, I have no way to test that, since I do not have a VPN service.
 
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