Dtg/microsoft(so What's The Deal With "sale Slots" )

The term "sale slots" have become a hot topic because clearly steam/sony get of give a dang near endless supply of them and microsoft gets or give 2 and rarely lately,so just how can dtg have so much flexibility with steam/sony and dam near none with microsoft?Microsoft get paid sales or not so they lose nothing either way.Doesn't make sence.

 

I agree it doesn't make sense. But most legal mumbo jumbo doesn't.

I do know that MS can be very controlling and not one contract with a developer is the same so there is no standard we can say for sure that they use.

I've been noticing however that since they have been really pushing Gamepass that Playstation has gotten better sales than Xbox in general across the board. So it doesn't seem to be just with TSW.

Gamepass is a great feature for Xbox users and a really good reason to go with them over Sony, especially with all the day one releases they are adding. It seems Sony is trying to compete by having sales.

It is very frustrating that Sony seems to have sales every 3 months on DLC and Steam every 2 months.

We can only hope that with all the different threads that are about this that they are actively discussing on ways to improve this.

Since December I haven't seen a sale on any DLC for Xbox just the base game which is ridiculous.

 

Here is Microsoft's sales policy
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/publish/put-apps-and-add-ons-on-sale
Bascially there are no restrictions from Microsoft. There policy is pretty cut and dry

 

Isn't that for the Windows Store? Wrong T's and C's

 

Microsoft store which is bascially the Xbox Store. On a Xbox Console it isn't called the Xbox Store, it's called the Microsoft Store. The same policy applies

 

The policy seems to imply that a developer can choose when to have a sale price offered and set the duration and price themselves. And that appears to be the correct policy for xbox sales, it’s the policy everything else I’ve found online directs me to. Unless DTG are selling under a different policy, one attached to a particular individual contract, it does seem that there aren’t the restrictions that DTG say there are. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that other games have frequent sales for their DLC on xbox but I don’t know about that one way or another. I’ve always found it odd that xbox players don’t get sales offered to them very often because it is a standard method of increasing revenue in practically every market known to man.

I wonder if DTG are waiting for Microsoft to offer them sales windows (which they will do for the specific big sale events they have) and are unaware that they can also set them up themselves. That would certainly solve the mystery. Unless of course, as I questioned above, they are selling under a different policy than this one. Maybe DTG should look into it again just to be sure.

 

Im thinking it's a communication issue. It certainly can't be because they have a different policy because that policy would apply to all developers. If its a communication issue or if they are unaware that they can do it themselves then that is fine because mistakes or not knowing things is part of life but that policy certainly contradicts what dtg have been claiming all this time. Also DTG would not intentionally not have sales on xbox

 

The problem with that is that DTG are plainly willing to have sales all the time, at least on Steam and Playstation. According to what Natalie is telling us, Microsoft says "Okay, you can put two and only two XBox items on sale next week. They have to be core games, not DLC, and the price range must be within X to Y."

This doesn't jibe at all with the (PC) T&C linked above. It does however jibe with the observed facts: DTG have lots of sales on other platforms, just not XBox.

Why so much looser rules for PC? Microsoft doesn't have complete platform, hardware and online distribution control over the PC world like it does over XBox- not for lack of trying. If there is one thing we know about M$, it is that they have been trying to leverage monopolistic control ever since Bill Gates first conned IBM with a pirated copy of CP/M.

 

Again it's not PC only. It applies to xbox as well. It literally mentions xbox one on it. Microsoft Store is the name of the store on Xbox. That is the policy for sales on all xbox games

 

I like/hate the fact that this is still a debate. And I'm not taking a shot at anyone here, to clarify.

Microsoft are generally more restrictive than Steam, idk about PS.

I should know, I have accounts on both Steam and Xbox and have many games on both.
On Steam DTG are - if you like - quite Trigger-happy when it comes to sales. And apparently the same on PS - to an extent - so why not Xbox?

Well it's quite obvious that it's on the side of MS - which, to note is an American (Capitalism Central) Company worth $1 TRILLION (Big companies often do these kinds of things, idk why) - not allowing the sales to happen.

What other reason do they have to deny (apparently this is the figure ⅓ of the playerbase sales.
I don't see any.

So clearly MS only give out so many sales slots and dtg only get a couple.

 

No it is not a blanket policy. I've worked in marketing for both EA and Mojang and we had different rules for sales with Xbox for each company.

With EA we had way more flexibility and slots than we had with Mojang. It depends on how big you are and how diverse your portfolio is.

It's just like license agreements, its not so cut and dry.

 

Funny you should bring up EA awhile back someone here posted that dtg current CEO was a former executive at EA.

 

I believe Sam used to work for EA as well.

 

So is this good for dtg too have former EA guys,EA's track record for games and quality are hit and miss,I not gonna pretend EA the perfect game publisher very few game publishers are.

But i will say at least sam does put in some real effort to keep dtg some what on track.

 

I might be wrong , but was the sale 20% off HMA ?

 

After any item is given a discounted rate there is a lockout period before it can be reduced in price again - this applies across every platform. There are also restrictions regarding how much titles can be reduced by that is influenced by the time they've been available (you're not going to find the latest route reduced by 75% in its first sale, for example). This is pretty standard consumer-protection practise.

Xbox run regular promotions on store that offer additional visibility to your title and we grab as many of those as we can. What does this mean? It means we get to show TSW on the front of the store, which helps raise awareness of the game significantly.

We take every single promotion opportunity we're offered on Xbox and run discounts as often as we can. We know you don't like this answer and we'd love to be able to run sales more often, but asking the same thing in 15 different ways is going to bring you any greater satisfaction.

I'm going to lock this here because it's just going to go the same way as every other thread on the topic.

You have been heard. We know you'd like more sales. We're doing what we can.