Monday, November 29th 2021
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Calls For Unified Digital Games Store
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney recently spoke at the Coalition for App Fairness conference in Seoul where he called for a unified digital store for game platforms. Sweeney stated that Epic Games had already begun working with publishers and service providers to create this vision of a unified store where customers could be confident that their purchases would work across all platforms. The system described by Sweeney would be a radical departure from existing ecosystems such as Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, Nintendo, and Epic where digital purchases are often limited to an individual companies platform.
This new system would allow games purchased from any ecosystem to be fully playable on all supported platforms without requiring multiple purchases. The success of this vision is entirely dependent on game studios signing up to the program which will likely be a hard sell given the expected fall in sales. While there are limited options currently exist for cross-buy games the movie industry has implemented a similar program with Movies Anywhere which boasts large studios such as Disney, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.
Source:
Bloomberg
This new system would allow games purchased from any ecosystem to be fully playable on all supported platforms without requiring multiple purchases. The success of this vision is entirely dependent on game studios signing up to the program which will likely be a hard sell given the expected fall in sales. While there are limited options currently exist for cross-buy games the movie industry has implemented a similar program with Movies Anywhere which boasts large studios such as Disney, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.
Tim SweeneyWhat the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms
119 Comments on Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Calls For Unified Digital Games Store
There are two things I'd be interested in: making do with only one client app and being able to buy once, play everywhere (be it a console or PC). Stores could come up with some federation API to address the former, but they'll never deliver the latter.
Stop insulting others.
Stop the piracy posting.
Thank You.
Streaming(cloud gaming) didn't work for either Sony or Microsoft, but GamePass worked and Sony had no answer for it. Won't be surprised if this whole thing will end up as subscription service.
You create a system that weighs % of share and a visibility rating on the store, so every publishers has a string of featured items they can push on the frontpage for example. Big money can pop up first, visibility can be measured over time and dynamically readjusted based on user habits.
You will need far less money than reinventing all the wheels involved (GDPR, authentication, license registration, account management, servers) for every separate platform if you are abstracting that into messaging systems between all platforms.
If you really wanted to, you could even have in-framed Steam, EGS, etc. Stores, so everyone can have their illusion of control.
I always think of a very simple example... the London Oyster card. This whole idea isn't new, it just requires people sticking their heads together.
You buy a game on PC, then can play it on PS5, Xbox etc. without buying it again, that's consumer friendly.
What's also funny, is that GOG Galaxy is 100 times more functional than EGS, even though its barely used by GOG users.That's another load of BS that I've missed.
1. The only launcher that had such issues is EGS. Right now I'm running Steam in the background, along with several messengers and even Nicehash, and my CPU usage sits comfortably at 1% (R7 3800X). Steam itself barely ever gets above 0.1% even when it's active.
2. Been playing since close beta up until they've decided to shrink the server base, and never heard of any issues on steam, especially that dramatic. I know in early versions there were stability issues with Steam overlay, but it can(and should) be disabled. AFAIK 99.9% of performance issues in QC are quake-related, not Steam-related.
I wonder what the sales will be like as I think FF7 remake is quite possibly the biggest test for this store, as I understand it Kingdom Hearts sales are really bad.
Do you have anything constructive to add or did you join in just to rag on Epic?