Epic Games Store overhaul is "too little, too late", says Newzoo analyst

Industry analyst Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at Newzoo, doesn't think Epic's planned storefront overhaul can save the Epic Games Store from irrelevance. Speaking to PC Gamer, he was blunt: "I don't see how they can recover at this point."

Rosier's core argument is that Steam's dominance is now effectively unbreakable. Epic's free game giveaways — the store's main draw — haven't built genuine engagement. Players log in, claim the game, and leave. Rosier even noted that giveaways can backfire, driving sales on Steam instead as players prefer to keep their libraries in one place. He also pointed to Epic fighting too many battles at once: "They try to win against Steam, they try to win against Apple, against Google Play, and probably they run out of steam on where they cannot fight all these battles at the same time." The planned redesign — faster browsing, tailored recommendations, a cleaner interface — doesn't address that structural problem, in his view.

Rosier was notably warmer about Epic as a game developer. He singled out Fortnite as a genuine bright spot, pointing to the current season's dense roster of crossover cosmetics — Sonic the Hedgehog, Pac-Man, Kingdom Hearts' Sora, and Persona 5's Joker all sharing the same battle pass. "You can see they put a lot of thought in Fortnite right now," he said, adding that the game is in noticeably better shape than it was six or twelve months ago. The implication is clear: Epic's future is in live-service games, not storefronts.

The Epic Games Store does have one potential lifeline in the pipeline — Epic's Steve Allison confirmed earlier this year that the store plans to launch on the next Xbox console on day one, with Microsoft apparently welcoming the idea. Whether that hardware foothold changes the competitive picture remains to be seen, but Rosier's overall verdict is that the store's window to seriously challenge Steam has likely already closed.