Epic explains why it hasn't sued Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft over 30% fee | Epic vs Google
Fortnite firm says platform holders' hardware losses justify the need to charge devs for game sales and microtransactions
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Epic Games has offered an explanation as to why it is not suing Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox for the same reasons it has brought both Google and Apple to court.
The Fortnite developer's legal dispute with both mobile firms centres around the 30% fee they take from all sales and in-app transactions, as well as Apple's closed ecosystem that does not allow third-party app stores.
During the ongoing Epic vs Google jury trial in San Francisco on Friday, The Verge reported the court heard a taped deposition from Epic's chief financial officer Randy Gelber explaining why the company is only targeting mobile platform holders.
"We believe those [consoles] to be competitive markets and we believe that the fee, their cost structure, is entirely different than a mobile app store," Gelber said in a recording from September 2022.
Gelber was then pressed on how the cost structure for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft is different from that of Google and Apple.
"Well, they subsidize hardware, so they sell their hardware, as far as I can tell from widely published reports, at a loss, and so the fee needs to cover that," he said.
"Mobile apps are typically low in size and so their costs are higher, and I think their customer service costs are higher because people don’t call Google about apps, they call the developer generally."
Gelber did not appear to address the fact that Apple also sell its own hardware, or that the console platform holders also have closed ecosystems that do not allow third-party stores.
Elsewhere in the proceedings, Google revealed how much it believes Epic owes in damages with the Android firm's selected economist, Dr. Gregory Leonard, stating it was close to $400,000.
According to Leonard, Epic Games received $1,329,770 in revenue during the brief period that Fortnite's hotfix enabled direct payments, before the game was pulled from the store. He calculated that Google is owed 30% of this, or $398,931, as reported by The Verge.
The evidence part of the trial has now concluded, with closing statements and the jury's verdict expected next week.
Judge James Donato has ordered that Google and Epic hold settlement talks before proceedings resume on Monday, December 11.
You can catch up on the biggest news from Epic vs Google here.