14 DAY TRIAL // Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney made the headlines a couple of months ago after accusing Microsoft of trying to create a closed platform by bringing together PCs, mobiles, and consoles and moving everything in its own store.
Microsoft, on the other hand, discussed the matter at the recent Build developer conference, emphasizing that Windows was, is, and will remain an open platform for developers, but it appears that Sweeney still isn’t convinced that the software giant is willing to go in this direction.
In an interview with GamesBeat, Sweeney reiterates his previous words and points out that Microsoft is adopting a strategy similar to Apple’s, laying the foundation of what could become a fully closed ecosystem that would dramatically affect the rest of the industry.
“We want a direct relationship with our customers. To build a business and sell products to them. The most ridiculous thing is this. As a result of the digital distribution revolution, all of these giant retailers – Wal-Mart, Best Buy – were replaced by Microsoft, Apple, and Valve. It’s really critical that we fight to maintain the openness of the key platforms in our industry,” Sweeney said.
Asked about the reasons that made him talk about this publicly, Sweeney said that he spent no less than 18 months talking with Microsoft officials. Some agreed that Windows must remain open, but due to what he calls “some bean-counters” at Microsoft, the company is still pursuing the same approach for a closed platform.
Microsoft pays big developers to create apps for Windows 10
When talking about the universal app platform that Microsoft is pushing for so hard these days, Sweeney say that he expects this effort to fail, pretty much because “nobody is adopting UWP.” Universal apps are designed to run on all Windows 10 devices, adapting to different display sizes and offering the same feature package.
But according to Sweeney, only developers that are paid by Microsoft are actually creating universal apps for Windows 10 and interest in this new concept remains very low.
“Nobody is adopting UWP except for a small number of developers that Microsoft is paying to adopt UWP. The same goes for the Windows Store in Windows 8.1. It’s a dump for ports of Android games to Windows that Microsoft has paid for. If you search for ‘GTA’ in the Windows store, there’s this mobile GTA game. Where is GTA? It’s the number one game on the PC of all time, and it’s not there,” he said.
Epic’s CEO also revealed that several other famous developers share his feelings, but all are afraid to become more vocal because they “don’t want to take on a $400 billion corporation.”
Microsoft hasn’t yet offered a statement to respond to Sweeney’s comments, but we’ve reached out to the company and will update the story should an answer be offered.