The business foundation of a console as a platform is rooted in the sales cut of games that come out of their platform. The more consoles are sold, the more people buy games on their platforms, the more they profit with the 30% profit sharing system per copy that is promoted by many platform owners today. Therefore, the situation that many platforms also apply is unlikely to change much in the future. However, there was one statement that was quite surprising coming from the big boss of Xbox – Phil Spencer. He actually wanted to open Xbox for the arrival of another digital storefront.
This was revealed by Phil Spencer in his latest interview with Polygon. Spencer said that he could see the potential for a future where other digital storefronts such as the Epic Games Store and itch.io would be included on the Xbox console, similar to how Microsoft currently handles Windows. He felt that when this situation occurred in PC, not many people would care. Spencer also admitted that efforts to inject subsidies into hardware sales were increasingly ineffective. He said the console market is not growing, component prices are not getting cheaper, and more and more gamers are now moving to PCs.
No wonder, Phil Spencer's statement certainly confused many parties because the profit sharing system from the console store is actually the biggest source of profit. Is this a signal that Microsoft is no longer interested in the hardware market? Let's just wait.
Source: Polygon via Eurogamer