In a blog post, the Head of Xbox Game Studios, Matt Booty, has announced that the Microsoft Store will soon reduce their commission for in-store purchases to 12%. Microsoft is also working on upgrading the Store in the coming months with more features, and has promised to improve install reliability and download speeds.
The reduction in store fees down to 12%, which will go into effect starting 1st August 2021, is great news for game developers and will hopefully encourage more developers to list their games on the Microsoft Store. A 12% commission would bring the Microsoft Store in line with the Epic Games store, and it puts more pressure on to Valve’s Steam.
Steam continues to take a 30% cut for the first $10 million, after which it takes a 25% cut, and then 20% after the sales cross $50 million. This is still significantly higher than the 12% that Epic Games takes, and what Microsoft will take in the future.
Reducing the commission may not be enough to entice developers as the Microsoft Store is not very feature rich in comparison to other online stores. To increase the appeal of the Store, Microsoft has committed to improve the download speeds, increase install reliability and will even open to the store any Windows application, including Chrome and Firefox.