{"id":117622,"date":"2020-09-04T14:50:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T14:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/369519"},"modified":"2020-09-04T14:50:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-04T14:50:00","slug":"game-discoverability-now-are-the-store-wars-really-upon-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/09\/04\/game-discoverability-now-are-the-store-wars-really-upon-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Discoverability Now: Are the ‘store wars’ really upon us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u0092s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. <\/small><\/i><\/strong> <\/p>\n

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[Hi, I\u2019m \u2018how people find your game\u2019 expert Simon Carless<\/a>, and you\u2019re reading the Game Discoverability Now! newsletter<\/a>, which you can subscribe to now<\/strong><\/a>, a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Welcome to the latest Game Discoverabilityland weekly round-up, whereby I go semi-deep on something, follow up on some other things, and end it out with \u2018like a thousand other things\u2019 about game discovery\/platforms that you might have missed.<\/p>\n

Ready? So let\u2019s boogie\u2026<\/p>\n

How will the platform wars be fought?<\/h2>\n

So, Joost Van Dreunen, the ex-head\/founder of Superdata Research (who has a game biz book that looks intriguing<\/a> coming out in October!) has a slightly under-the-radar newsletter<\/a>, Superjoost (!)<\/p>\n

Anyhow, his very interesting thoughts on Epic vs. Apple<\/a> strayed into some areas I\u2019ve been thinking about a lot. He shared his below infographic on how game platforms pay out, and suggested: \u201cIf everyone continues to agree, content creators won’t stand a chance. But all it takes is for one of them to drastically lower their rates, and game makers and audiences will flock to it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

So here\u2019s my counterthesis to Joost, unfortunately for everyone hoping that royalty percentages for third-party game studios will improve. I do think that the game industry is changing significantly, and platform exclusives can be important (especially on consoles!) But I see two major trends:<\/p>\n