Store Wars The Battle for Hearts Minds and

Store Wars The Battle for Hearts, Minds and the Wallets of Gamers

Background: Billions and Billions

PC’s Share The PC games market is not the largest segment, but is the most open. Consoles and mobile platforms are walled gardens.

Why Talk About This Now? Mike Blank, Senior Vice President at EA explained “So with more players playing more games and more platforms, frankly, we want to be where the players are. ”

Back To The Future In 2011, EA announced that it wanted Origin, its digital distribution platform, to match Valve’s Steam platform in terms of services by offering cloud game saves, auto-patching, achievements, and crossplatform releases. As part of that strategy EA stopped releasing new titles on Steam. By 2013 the Origin Platform had over 50 million registered users. Returning EA titles to Steam and announcing interoperability is a big deal.

A Disturbance In the Balance Per Tim Sweeney, “Soon we'll launch the Epic Games store, and begin a long journey to advance the cause of all developers. The store will launch with a handcurated set of games on PC and Mac, then it will open up more broadly to other games and to Android and other open platforms throughout 2019. ”

Shots Fired

Epic Versus Steam

What Does It Mean For Indies?

Fragmentation versus Choice Available via the Epic Store and Launcher Available via the Rockstar Store and Launcher Not Available on Steam at the same time

Bridging the Divide

What Is The Future? The Old The New One platform with over 90% share Multiple stores and platforms One community Multiple communities Monopoly Competition Open (for a fee) Curated, selective Discovery is a challenge, shovel ware Less options, less innovation?