Speaking to Polygon during GDC 2024, Spencer believes there’s a future where the Epic Games Store and Itch.io could be available on Xbox. “[Consider] our history as the Windows company. Nobody would blink twice if I said, ‘Hey when you’re using a PC, you get to decide the type of experience you have [by picking where to buy games]. There’s real value in that.” That freedom could be beneficial to console manufacturers, Microsoft included.

Talking about the current generation, Spencer noted, “Moore’s Law has slowed down. The price of the components of a console aren’t coming down as fast as they have in previous generations.” The console market also seemingly hasn’t seen radical growth compared to PC and handheld.

“[Subsidizing hardware] becomes more challenging in today’s world. And I will say, and this may seem too altruistic, I don’t know that it’s growing the industry. So I think, what are the barriers? What are the things that create friction in today’s world for creators and players? And how can we be part of opening up that model?”

Less exclusivity for Xbox titles is one step, but it also extends to the storefronts where titles are sold. “If I want to play on a gaming PC, then I feel like I’m more a continuous part of a gaming ecosystem as a whole. As opposed to [on console], my gaming is kind of sharded — to use a gaming term — based on these different closed ecosystems that I have to play across.”

Of course, whether other storefronts want to be available on Xbox, PlayStation, or even Nintendo platforms remains to be seen. With Steam crossing 36 million concurrent players and showing no signs of slowing down, it may be content to maintain its stranglehold on PC gaming.

Microsoft will bring Grounded to PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch on April 16th and Sea of Thieves to PS5 on April 30th. It remains to be seen if other titles will follow suit, though reports claim that the “majority” of them will be on PlayStation 5 at some point. Stay tuned for updates in the meantime.

Now, popular indie game marketplace Itch.io has also come forward and declared its stance on NFTs-and it’s an interesting one. In a statement shared on Twitter, Itch.io called NFTs a “scam”, pretty strongly voiced their opinion on people advocating for them. You can see their tweet below.

For those unfamiliar, Itch.io also allows users to upload works related to art on their website, along with the freedom to sell anything and everything on the storefront. The tweet getting posted makes sense, as creators might be apprehensive of the marketplace’s stance on it, given their way of working with developers.

A few have asked about our stance on NFTs:

NFTs are a scam. If you think they are legitimately useful for anything other than the exploitation of creators, financial scams, and the destruction of the planet the we ask that please reevaluate your life choices.

Peace ✌️

— itch.io (@itchio) February 6, 2022

Indie storefront Itch.io is coming to the Epic Games Store as a downloadable app, according to a report by Polygon. For those unfamiliar with Itch.io, it is a popular digital storefront that distributes all indie games of all shapes and sizes, and is home to more than 200,000 games. Now, that storefront is coming to the Epic Games Store, along with several other PC apps.

Users will be able to download the app from the Epic Games Store, and access Itch.io’s storefront from there. Epic will not take a percentage of the sales of any games purchase through Itch.io’s app. Developers who sell their games on Itch.io get to determine what percentage of their sales go to Itch.io. For comparison, Steam takes a tiered system in which Valve takes between a 20% to 30% cut of sales, depending on how much money a games makes, while the Epic Games Store only take a 12% cut.

“Itch.io is a collection of some of the most unique, interesting, and independent creations you’ll find on the web,” a representative from itch.io told Polygon. “Bringing the itch.io app to the Epic Games Store will give us an opportunity to widen the audience of people who can discover the diverse collection of indie works that we host.”

The move sounds like a win-win. Epic clearly wants the Epic Game Store to be more than just a storefront for games (Last year, Spotify was the first non-gaming app to arrive at the Epic Games Store) and the creators on Itch.io get to put their work in front of a much larger audience. The other apps coming to the Epic Game Store today are iHeartRadio Brace, KenShape, and Krita.

Remember Monothetic’s intriguing top-down shooter Beacon? It’s coming up soon but in the place you’d expect. The developer has announced that Beacon will be launching first for Itch.io on April 30th via its First Access service. Spending $20 will grant players access along with a Steam key for the game’s full release. Though only 1,000 keys will be available, there could be more depending on demand.

The First Access build contains quite a bit for players to sink their teeth into with four of six levels available, six different types of weather, over 75 items, more than 50 weapons, 50 DNA upgrades/mutations and more than 25 enemies. There’s only one boss fight but that’s just as well since the final release has six.

Beacon follows the tale of Freja whose ship crashes on the planet Kovus-18. Embarking on a journey to locate a beacon to signal for rescue, Freja must battle against various hazards. If she dies, it’s possible to respawn as a clone and modify her genes from any enemies harvested earlier. This grants new abilities and allows Freja to adapt to survive. Check out our official interview with Monothetic to learn more about the game.