I dunno. Let's say I play fortnite on both my PS4 and my Xbox. But I buy my skins on xbox because that's where I have my payment method set up/secure etc.
Why does Sony need a cut of what I purchased? And that's with a massive title like Fortnite. What about for smaller titles like IDARB? Let's say I buy it on both consoles but only have skins on the Xbox. So then if I play it on the PS4, the devs have to pay Sony a royalty?
Sure it works great for Sony, but I don't really see the benefit it has for me or smaller developers.
You? None. There's absolutely zero benefit for you, I don't think anyone has claimed there should or would be. It shouldn't concern the end user or even be something they'd ever consider. But a benefit you could have is if you could jump on your xbox and pay less for XYZ currency if it's discounted there, but play the game on a PlayStation, and if that were possible of course many people would jump at it and Sony would lose their only revenue for facilitating a F2P game through their platform. Bye-bye 30% cut.
The benefits for devs/publishers too is the much wider access to players to fill their lobbies on all platforms and not having their game fade into obscurity where otherwise it might on a smaller platform, I dunno, I've not considered it much beyond that. Their incentive is to keep everything fair and even between platforms of face losing out to contract clauses like this, so no massive discounts of MTX/currency on one particular platform to upset the balance 'cause it's coming out of their pockets not the pockets of those who made the sale. It's in their own interests to keep it all fair and level.
The whole idea of this setup is to ensure a balance between people playing a (likely F2P game) and spending their money within the same ecosystem. Sony get nothing for people playing F2P games on their system, never have since they introduced true F2P.
So they don't need a cut of
your individual purchase. It's not micromanaged that way. If you spend time between two platforms but only spend on one, well you're just a rounding error and nobody carse. But if there's, for some reason, a large imbalance between where people are playing and where they are spending, this seeks to redress that should it go as far out of whack as 85% detriment. So then the dev/pub pays a percentage of that income to the platformholder that facilitated the actual gamplay. And I imagine it's set at 85% and not a 1:1 ratio/100%, as there's other costs to consider such as payment processing and the customer service that goes with the transaction itself etc. these are the sorts of things plenty of people in this thread have either ignored, not considered or just give zero fucks about 'cause they'd rather shout "#4dapayers" and pitchfork mindlessly. But there's nothing new on that front, nothing new there at all.
Should I be outraged about this like some people are and sell my ps5?
It's like football fans burning shirts outside the stadium when a player mentions they might end their career elsewhere for personal/family reasons or whatever. Burn it all to the ground, fuck the world, scorched earth!