Yesterday, Lori Wright, vice president of Xbox, appeared as a witness in the trial of Epic Games and Apple. She revealed several details from the business model of Microsoft‘s gaming division and stated that the company has never really made a profit from the sale of consoles.

One of the fundamental points that Epic Games defends is the permission to use third—party payment systems in the App Store. According to the company, this will “put an end to Apple‘s monopoly”, and users will receive more convenient and cheaper payment methods inside applications. That’s just such an innovation will affect all iOS applications, not just games like Fortnite.

Last year, Microsoft fought for the appearance on iOS of the service for “playing in the cloud” xCloud. From the letters published during the trial between Epic Games and Apple, it became known that a similar Shadow Cloud Computing service suffered because of this struggle.

China’s Tencent is suing DD373.com — a platform for trading in-game items. The corporation claims that all virtual content in games (resources, weapons, skins, etc.) belong exclusively to it. Even if gamers spend real money on it. The giant’s statement immediately caused a lot of indignation among the players.

Activision Blizzard has reported a record first quarter. In January-March 2021, the company earned $2.28 billion — more than in any other first quarter in the history of the publishing house. Call of Duty played an important role in this.

African mobile publisher Carry1st received $6 million in investments, including from Riot Games. With this money, the company hopes to attract developers from all over the world to the local market.

This proposal was made by Phil Schiller, the head of Apple‘s marketing department, who was also responsible for the App Store. In his letter to Steve Jobs and Eddy Cue he stressed that someday “the company will face a sufficient number of problems that will force it to adjust the 70/30 model.” Therefore, as soon as the App Store revenue exceeds $1 billion, it is desirable for Apple to reduce the commission itself.

Shortly before the start of the confrontation with Apple, the head of Epic Games asked Microsoft to make multiplayer on Xbox consoles free. He sent a letter with this idea to Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox.

Walmart planned to launch its own game streaming service called Project Storm. It was supposed to be released on Windows and support launchers like Steam, Epic Games Store, Origin and Battle.net . It was also assumed that games in Project Storm could be obtained through subscription and direct purchases.

In 2019, immediately after the launch of the Epic Games Store, the owners of the store developed two scenarios for its development: aggressive and cautious. In an optimistic scenario, Epic Games hoped to get 50% of the PC market (but it depended on whether Steam would react to the company’s actions). In the pessimistic — to keep only 8% of the PC market.

On May 11, the head of Epic Games sent a letter to Yves Guillemot, the head of Ubisoft. He wrote that in the last 48 hours, 70% to 90% of fraudulent transactions in The Division 2 have passed through the Epic Games Store (EGS).

During the hearing on the case, the head of Epic Games admitted that he would be satisfied if Apple decided to soften the conditions in the App Store only for his company. Apparently, it was about reducing the commission by 30%.

We continue to share details of the trial between Epic Games and Apple. During the hearing, Epic Games also disclosed financial figures for 2018-2019. Among them: the revenue of individual projects, the profit of the entire company and the number of staff in different directions.

For the first six months since the release of Borderlands 3, it was only available in the Epic Games Store. In case of failure of the game, it could cost Epic Games $ 115 million, but already in two premiere weeks, the loot shooter managed to earn the lion’s share of the amount.

Giveaways in the Epic Games Store are in great demand among gamers. However, only a small part of the audience buys games in the store after them. Epic Games estimated that in the first nine months of EGS operation (December 2018 – September 2019), such users brought her only $53 million – this is 33% of the total revenue of the store.

Yesterday, the trial of Epic Games and Apple began, during which the companies shared a lot of legal documents. One of them contains data on how much Epic paid developers for the first months of free giveaways of their games in the Epic Games Store.

Sony for a long time did not want to support the crossplay function on PlayStation consoles, refusing to share its audience with competitors. In 2019, she changed her mind, but set a condition — game publishers will have to pay a commission.

ArtStation has joined the Epic Games family. That’s how today, on April 30, both companies announced a deal that took place, according to which the developer of Unreal Engine becomes the owner of a social network for digital artists.