The brand-new revenue sharing deal is said to offer GameStop a portion of any digital sales made on those Xbox consoles, including digital downloads of complete video games and DLC, in-game microtransactions, and any subscriptions (which would appear to consist of things like Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass).
GameStop and Microsoft have gotten in into a multiyear agreement that offers the video game merchant a cut of every digital purchase made on any Xbox consoles it directly offers going forward, Ars Technica reports.
The most significant concern is just how much of a cut GameStop is getting. Neither of the 2 financiers that Ars Technica sourced have any concrete answers; GameStop has not yet reacted to a demand for comment. A Microsoft PR agent tells The Verge, “We have an incentive structure with GameStop as we make with a number of our partners throughout numerous channels,” which seems like a kind of indirect verification even if it doesnt include any detail.
There are a lot of unanswered concerns
Thats, naturally, assuming that GameStops cut is a considerable chunk of money; one investor speculates that the revenue sharing was merely a sweetener for GameStops arrangement to utilize Microsofts cloud facilities and Surface tablets, rather than the core of the offer itself. Ideally, GameStops next earning report will help shed some light on the information.
Capitalizing a cut of those sales might help minimize a few of the income slowdown from digital-only sales, similar to the Universal/ AMC deal announced earlier this year that provided the theater chain of cut of Universal films that leap to digital sellers early.
Likewise uncertain: whether the offer applies to simply games or other digital content purchases (like films, TV shows, and music) or if utilized consoles that GameStop resells to brand-new clients will be included in the digital income sharing.
Computer game have been trending towards digital purchases for years, much to the dismay of retailers like GameStop, that make their bread and butter selling (and reselling) physical copies of games and consoles to consumers. And the upcoming next-gen consoles throw that issue into further relief: both Microsoft and Sony are offering digital-only choices in the kind of the Xbox Series S and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, which cut merchants like GameStop out of the game purchasing loop entirely.
