When bells began to ring investigations and lawsuits against Apple for its policies regarding iOS and the App Store, in reality, what we witnessed was only the starting signal for the review of a business model that is quite present today. In other words, although the informative focus (as well as the legal one) focused on the actions against Apple, there is no doubt that other companies began to think that later it could be their turn.
One of them is Sony, more specifically PlayStation. Its position in the console market is indisputable, during the last decade it has always led it, as we can see in this report and, although at times the distance with respect to Microsoft Xbox has been substantially reduced, as happened in August Last year, the general trend is that PlayStation dominates the market with ease, as we can see in the StatCounter data:
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – OS Market Share
The PlayStation Store model is undoubtedly very similar to Apple’s with iOS, so it makes all the sense in the world that legal action be taken against the Japanese multinational. And as we can read in VGC, a movement of this type has been started in the United Kingdom. More specifically we talk about a £5bn lawsuit for allegedly ‘ripping off’ customers.
The raison d’être of said legal action, which is a collective lawsuit, is found in the fact that PlayStation Store is the only digital store available in Sony’s operating system for its console, added to the commission that is agency for each sale that is carried out through it. How much is that commission? Even if you don’t know it, I’m sure you can imagine it… indeed, 30%, the magic figure in which, «»»»»coincidentally»»»»» (I apologize for the abuse of quotation marks, but I’m sure you understand the reason for this), many of the companies responsible for these stores have coincided for years.
The interesting thing about the case is that on this occasionThe plaintiffs are not the developers and distributors of the games, but the users, and that the lawsuit establishes the compensation that they should receive, between 67 and 562 pounds plus interest. And it is a very interesting approach, since it is possible to understand that the distributors, as a result of that percentage of “bite”, increase the prices of the digital versions that are distributed through the PlayStation Store, so in the end it is the pocket of the user who ends up paying that 30% imposed by Sony.
