I'm confident the snippet is real because of its relative mundanity-compared to, say, the email in which Sweeney apologizes to Ubisoft-and what I know about Epic's deals. I've contacted Epic, and will update this story if it provides more context or denies that it made such an offer to Sony. On day one, Apple uploaded a ton of documents that it didn't mean to, which is how we learned about some of Epic's other dealings. I didn't peep the folder in time to see the document myself, but surprising as it may seem, such a mistake has become expected during the first week of the Epic v Apple trial. It was deleted after being uploaded, but Resetera poster Raigor grabbed it (they've grabbed other now-deleted documents from the folder). This document snippet was retrieved from the Box folder where Epic and Apple's attorneys have been uploading exhibits. The document describes the idea as a "moonshot" and "non-starter." Sounds about right. No surprise there: Microsoft quite openly backed Valve when it started putting its games on Steam again, including the Halo Master Chief Collection.Īs for getting Nintendo games on the Epic Games Store, there may not even have been an attempt. It also mentions that Xbox head Phil Spencer and Valve boss Gabe Newell were having meetings at the time. The document notes that the head of Xbox Game Pass for PC didn't like what Epic was up to with its store, and that Microsoft viewed Epic as a company it was competing with to sign games. Sony's clearly got the ear of Epic CEO and controlling shareholder Tim Sweeney, and vice versa.Īs for Microsoft, Epic's initial talks apparently turned up resistance. The PlayStation company even owns a bit of Epic: Sony put $200 million into the business recently, and invested $250 million last year. (Image credit: Epic Games)Įpic and Sony don't always see eye-to-eye (they had a bit of an argument over crossplay), but they are pretty tight. (ReadySet Heroes remains exclusive, by the way, while Predator: Hunting Grounds has since released on Steam following a year of exclusivity.)Ī snippet of a document uploaded to ResetEra. Either a totally different deal was struck in the end, or those two games are part of a bigger batch of Sony-published exclusives coming to the Epic Games Store. One hopes Epic didn't put down $200M for Predator: Hunting Grounds, and $200M for both wouldn't make sense, either. The wording is somewhat ambiguous: Is it $200M per game, or $200M for all 4-6 games? It depends on the specific games, surely, and so far only two Sony-published games have released exclusively on the Epic Store: ReadySet Heroes and Predator: Hunting Grounds. "MG" surely stands for "minimum guarantee," which is how Epic refers to these exclusivity deals: It's the minimum revenue Epic guarantees a game publisher will make with an Epic Games Store exclusive, whether or not their game actually sells enough to cover it. It says that Epic offered Sony "$200M MG+ for 4-6 titles" and was awaiting Sony's response. We don't know what kind of deal Epic and Sony may have arrived at, as the document in question was made before any handshake.
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