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Epic Games offered $200m to Sony for 1st party titles on EGS and more

Kyougar

Kyougar

Cute Animal Whisperer
Member
Nov 3, 2017
9,414
poklane said:
Borderlands 3 was a brand new game in a well established franchise with its previous installments available on PC, meanwhile Sony's games are multiple years old and since Sony had no prior history on PC there's no established PC playerbase interested in those games. Overall I think $200mil for 4-6 games was a decent offer.
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You have to see it from Sony's side:

- it would be "minimum guarantee" money, NOT 200 million on top of unit sales. Epic would take all unit sales until the 200 million are fulfilled.
- Sony probably doesn't want the narrative that they can't make 200 million with the strength of their franchises
- if Sony wants to build up a presence and audience on PC, making it exclusive (for x amount of time) on a controversial and unsuccessful storefront is not the best path to take.
- regardless of age, I think sony IS of the mindset that their games are more prestigious and better than Borderlands 3 and deserve better payment
 
Nostremitus

Nostremitus

Member
Nov 15, 2017
7,782
Alabama
EatChildren said:
$0. Valve is the market leading storefront AFAIK and don't have to shop around for shit. The only incentive for them to cough up money is if they're directly competing with extremely high value software with Epic and they feel it's worth spending money to ensure the software is day and date on their platform, and that becomes less of an incentive when you're already making unfathomable bank as it is, further lessened knowing that Epic exclusivity is regularly timed and the games will come to your storefront eventually. End of the day the main interest is that of Sony's, porting the titles to a new platform and marketplace and having to consider whether or not the value of Epic exclusivity and upfront bonuses is enough to offset the initial loss by not having the titles available on Steam. Followed by Epic, whom want to bring in more revenue and subscriptions to their service. Valve can really just sit pretty.

That being said I call this ages ago, being that Sony or Epic would surely be courting the other given the former's renewed interest in PC ports. Given the existing relationship I figured Epic would surely be having conversations about headlining Sony's big first party titles finally on PC but only available on Epic.
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Thanks. You explained the point perfectly. Valve enjoys such a de facto monopoly that the only way to compete is through courting.
 
LewieP

LewieP

Member
Oct 26, 2017
18,156
Nostremitus said:
Thanks. You explained the point perfectly. Valve enjoys such a de facto monopoly that the only way to compete is through courting.
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It's a shame Epic never even tried making their client/service/features as good or even better than Steam, since we have no way of knowing how well that would have been received. Would have been an interesting comparison.
 

Randomly Generated

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,457
Nostremitus said:
Thanks. You explained the point perfectly. Valve enjoys such a de facto monopoly that the only way to compete is through courting.
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The way you compete with Steam is to disrupt their business model, like Gamepass is attempting. One of the absurd things about Epic is when all is said and done they'll have dumped over a billion dollars on a digital store when the same amount of money would've set up an incredible streaming service. It's like if Netflix had pivoted from DVD mail rental to brick and mortar video rental stores.
 
Fisty

Fisty

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,365
Worthless deal for Sony tbh, it's less about the money and more about the exposure and reach... and let's just say that EGS doesn't have the same capacity for those as Steam
 
HK-47

HK-47

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,638
Mass Effect said:
What does Epic have to do with this hypothetical? I thought we were talking about BB's success on PC in general. Either way, Epic doesn't set prices; the publisher does. As far as what price they're willing to pay for exclusivity? Who knows.

But anyway, aren't the Souls games most successful on PC? Pretty sure they are, or at least right up there with Playstation. Bloodborne on PC (specifically Steam) I think would do quite well, despite its age and even if it was priced high ($50+). I mean unless it's an absolutely horrid port.
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Not even a horrid port would kill it unless it was completely unfixable by modding. The original Dark Souls had a horrendous port that was saved by modders and fixers and then sold a billion copies.
 
LewieP

LewieP

Member
Oct 26, 2017
18,156
Nostremitus said:
Nothing is going to start off with decades of tweaking and upgrading from the start... Steam didn't either...
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A new entry in any market should generally seek to match or exceed what their competitors offer.

A new GPU manufacturer wouldn't achieve any success matching the performance of Geforce and AMD cards from a decade ago, regardless of how "new" they are.
 
Nostremitus

Nostremitus

Member
Nov 15, 2017
7,782
Alabama
LewieP said:
A new entry in any market should generally seek to match or exceed what their competitors offer.

A new GPU manufacturer wouldn't achieve any success matching the performance of Geforce and AMD cards from a decade ago, regardless of how "new" they are.
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And that's why there have been no new entries into the desktop GPU arena. Though, as the market shifts to ARM, I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually see Adreno cards. But that's tech, like Intel, that have built their tech up for a couple decades on side markets.
 
Iwao

Iwao

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,851
It's only a matter of time for God of War and Spider-Man (in that order), but I think Sony could command almost 200m for each of those individually and considering they are used to multi store releases and stand to make that way than EGS alone.

This deal must be for less high-profile games, or Epic is lowballing.
 
LewieP

LewieP

Member
Oct 26, 2017
18,156
Nostremitus said:
And that's why there have been no new entries into the desktop GPU arena. Though, as the market shifts to ARM, I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually see Adreno cards. But that's tech, like Intel, that have built their tech up for a couple decades on side markets.
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Feel free to insert any other example of a market with new entries.
 
CliveLH

CliveLH

Member
Jun 22, 2019
2,226
Raigor said:
Phil Spencer and Gabe Newell are BFF and good luck with convincing Nintendo lol

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From what document is this from ?
 
modiz

modiz

Member
Oct 8, 2018
17,907
If we are talking numbers, this essentially means that Epic guaranteed 4-5 million sales by going EGS exclusive, but if this is still under the usual EGS terms (just instant cash and then no revenue from the first 4-5 units being sold), then that is a bad deal for Sony for 4-6 FP games (Depending on which games I guess, if we are talking minor stuff like Dreams and Concrete Genie then it would be a pretty great deal).
 
Iron Eddie

Iron Eddie

Banned
Nov 25, 2019
9,812
Iwao said:
It's only a matter of time for God of War and Spider-Man (in that order), but I think Sony could command almost 200m for each of those individually and considering they are used to multi store releases and stand to make that way than EGS alone.

This deal must be for less high-profile games, or Epic is lowballing.
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Epic is just trying to get timed exclusivity much like how Sony does with games like Final Fantasy. I don't know of any games that remain exclusive on EGS, even Borderlands 3 is on Steam now. 200 million seems like easy money for Sony.

Fisty said:
If it was about money then GOW and TLOU1+2 and Spider-Man would be on Steam right now instead of 2 or 3 new IPs
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Well Days Gone, Horizon and other games are coming to PC. So which is it, reach or money?
 
GhostTrick

GhostTrick

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,440
tusharngf said:
thats a lot of money
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It all depends on the games. But if those are high profile releases, it's not really.
That'd be 50-60M per titles. Which means around 600k copies at 50 dollars... those are minimum guarantees so that means Sony wouldn't see a single dollar from EGS sales until it reached the threshold they paid. It's money paid in advance, not money given away. If those are high profile releases, those are numbers each of those titles could reach in less than 2 months on Steam.
 
LewieP

LewieP

Member
Oct 26, 2017
18,156
Nostremitus said:
Any other market with a defacto monopoly or duopoly? The same applies. It's why monopolies are illegal.
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That "defacto" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Steam is not a monopoly.

What is Steam's "defacto monopoly" doing to prevent Epic Game Store from having one of the most basic e-commerce features, a shopping cart?
 
tusharngf

tusharngf

Member
Oct 29, 2017
2,288
Lordran
EatChildren said:
$0. Valve is the market leading storefront AFAIK and don't have to shop around for shit. The only incentive for them to cough up money is if they're directly competing with extremely high value software with Epic and they feel it's worth spending money to ensure the software is day and date on their platform, and that becomes less of an incentive when you're already making unfathomable bank as it is, further lessened knowing that Epic exclusivity is regularly timed and the games will come to your storefront eventually. End of the day the main interest is that of Sony's, porting the titles to a new platform and marketplace and having to consider whether or not the value of Epic exclusivity and upfront bonuses is enough to offset the initial loss by not having the titles available on Steam. Followed by Epic, whom want to bring in more revenue and subscriptions to their service. Valve can really just sit pretty.

That being said I call this ages ago, being that Sony or Epic would surely be courting the other given the former's renewed interest in PC ports. Given the existing relationship I figured Epic would surely be having conversations about headlining Sony's big first party titles finally on PC but only available on Epic.
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I think they will have to start making games. Steam become famous because of free addictive games like dota cs at start . Valve needs to step up a bit now. There is no guarantee how long they can stay on top. It may not happen soon but they have to start working on some good titles.
 
Nostremitus

Nostremitus

Member
Nov 15, 2017
7,782
Alabama
LewieP said:
That "defacto" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Steam is not a monopoly.

What is Steam's "defacto monopoly" doing to prevent Epic Game Store from having one of the most basic e-commerce features, a shopping cart?
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Do you know what defacto means?

And a shopping cart is the hill you're choosing? It's because every purchase is tied to the developer of the specific product purchased.

Are you as angry about the Google Play Store?
 
Iron Eddie

Iron Eddie

Banned
Nov 25, 2019
9,812
Fisty

Fisty

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,365
Walken said:
Well Days Gone, Horizon and other games are coming to PC. So which is it, reach or money?
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I think I was pretty clear in saying they are trying to get folks to try out PS games and get their new IPs more exposure. If they were concerned with getting more sales from games they make, they would put their heavy hitters on Steam.
 
Iron Eddie

Iron Eddie

Banned
Nov 25, 2019
9,812
Fisty said:
I think I was pretty clear in saying they are trying to get folks to try out PS games and get their new IPs more exposure. If they were concerned with getting more sales from games they make, they would put their heavy hitters on Steam.
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Isn't this statement contradictory, they want more exposure but are not concerned about sales?

Nobody seems to have a consensus to why they are choosing the games they have so far and how often, other than Bloodborne appears to be the most requested with no signs it's actually coming anytime soon.
 
GhostTrick

GhostTrick

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,440
Nostremitus said:
When the biggest competitors in their market also use their infrastructure and require their customers download and use Steam, that's a defacto monopoly. It would be like, Best Buy, New Egg, and WalMart all routing purchases through Amazon...
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You'd be right if Valve actually forced the use of Steam keys and took a cut from that.

But you're wrong since it's the developpers choice to use these tools and sell steam keys for which Valve takes no cut.

They're using their infrastructures because other infrastructures either sucks or doesn't exist.

Hence why it's not a monopoly.
 
meschio94

meschio94

Member
Jan 26, 2018
140
GhostTrick said:
You'd be right if Valve actually forced the use of Steam keys and took a cut from that.

But you're wrong since it's the developpers choice to use these tools and sell steam keys for which Valve takes no cut.

They're using their infrastructures because other infrastructures either sucks or doesn't exist.

Hence why it's not a monopoly.
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Yeah, and is really a damage for us users, when you want to buy a key for red dead redemption 2, but is for the rockstar launcher, then if you want something useful you must wait for a sale on steam, and pay more anyway
 
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