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0 pointsrjzzleep4y ago0 comments

Don't Ubisoft and Epic have their own game stores inside of the playstation store?

And given how hard Sony and Microsoft compete to pursuade games to be released exclusively on either platform isn't it a bit of different dynamic?

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6 comments · 2 top-level

dijit4y ago· 4 in thread

> Ubisoft and Epic have their own game stores inside of the playstation store?

No. Sony PlayStation is almost identical to the Apple App Store in that there’s only 1 way to get your software working on retail units.

In fact it’s a lot worse in many ways, you need two specific types of hardware to even develop software- Sony is quite old school and draconian when it comes to testing, validation and communication.

At Ubisoft we had entire teams of compliance testers for Sony/Microsoft- and if you ever tried to get content outside of their stores (ie; loading after the game launches) they are quite aggressive about pulling the game down.

pacija4y ago

I buy my Sony PlayStation games on physical media in six brick and mortar stores owned by three different brands in Belgrade, Serbia. There are also a few online retailers who will send you the disc and you pay the delivery guy with cash. Sometimes I find a game at half the price at one store as compared to the others. I bought PS4 game three years ago in Oslo, Norway, and two years ago in Nicosia, Cyprus, both in different retail stores.

I wouldn't say visiting any of thousands of reatil stores around the world, or ordering online from any of thousands of online retailers count as "only 1 way".

swiftcoder4y ago

Despite multiple retail outlets, there's still only 1 way for developers to get their game on the platform.

Want to release only on physical media for PS or XBox? Have to go through platform cert anyway.

dijit4y ago

All copies of those games were produced and sold by Sony.

It doesn’t really matter who resells them, unless it’s a used copy then Sony has been paid — and it doesn’t mean that I as a publisher have an alternative “store” on the PlayStation or that I can print my own disks, which is what the parent stated.

sokoloff4y ago

How many ISPs provide transit for the bits from Apple’s app store? Sony has a bottleneck upstream of your retail purchase that’s analogous to Apple’s App Store bottleneck.

The only thing I see that’s slightly different in your example above is the ability to resell the game once you’re done with it.

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f6v4y ago

> And given how hard Sony and Microsoft compete to pursuade games to be released exclusively on either platform isn't it a bit of different dynamic?

It is different. Both Sony and MS buy studios that end up producing exclusives.

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