Imagine if Steam took 30% of all sales on their platform! Or if Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft charged developers 30% for online app sales! (Spoiler: they all do).
There are lots of things worth criticizing about Apple's model, but I'll never understand the fixation on the 30% rule. They provide a distribution platform that is every bit as robust and has a much larger reach than the video game consoles, and if they want to charge the same prices as the consoles I don't see why that's the hill to die on when there are so many other things that are more obviously rotten.
A) For the video game consoles this isn't true, they have full control just like Apple does.
B) Like I said, there are better hills to die on. App store monopoly is one that makes more sense to me (though I still actually disagree with the mainstream HN consensus on it).
> A) For the video game consoles this isn't true, they have full control just like Apple does.
You can still go to any physical retail store and buy a game developed by a 3rd party. Yes that 3rd Party company had to pay a license fee to release the game on the hardware but you can still choose where you want to buy that game from, including any sales or discounts that retailer might see fit to try to gain your custom.
Which is a right that Apple was willing to concede, but people flipped out when they announced you'd still have to pay the fee.
Consoles get a pass for things that Apple gets raked over the coals for. There's clearly something more going on than just "these specific behaviors are unacceptable always", which is the simplified take that gets popular on HN.
>Which is a right that Apple was willing to concede
Begrudgly and in a way that is very much viewed as malicious compliance, hence them now being investigated for it.
>but people flipped out when they announced you'd still have to pay the fee
I agree with them
When I buy an App from the app store, Apple should take a cut for providing the infrastructure, payment system etc, thats fair.
If I am buying something from a company directly from their website or marketplace, for a service they provide in that app, why should I pay Apple a fee?
> If I am buying something from a company directly from their website or marketplace, for a service they provide in that app, why should I pay Apple a fee?
Ok, but explain to me why it is ok for Sony to charge a license fee to release a game that is only sold in retail stores as physical copies, while it is not ok for Apple to charge a similar fee?
The parent's point is that HN goes all frothy-mouthed about the $0.50/download fee from Apple, and then uses pretzel logic to justify why it is ok for Playstation/Xbox/Nintendo to do the exact same thing.
The main difference is that the agreement between Sony and publisher only covers publishers first sale of the material, and their agreements only cover direct revenue share / static prices per unit from publisher.
It does not limit publisher in any way how they want to sell the physical copies, it does absolutely not apply to non-first-sale (depending on the structure of distribution, the box you see in a retail store might already be beyond first sale).
It also does not setup any limits on publishers activities that do not involve Sony licensed IP.
It's similar to how many vendors had revenue share licensing on their products in the past, which is legally distinct from flat percentage applied to distribution channel and limits on said distribution channel
n.b. Sony has, apparently, since PS4 sometimes been cheaper to develop for, in terms of non-revenue-share pricing, than Apple - often providing no-cost loaners for smaller teams.
I think that the issue here is that every person and their grandma has an iphone, and so they are a bigger target. Pretty much every single person in the western world has a mobile phone, and the majority of those are iPhones.
No matter how hard you try to compare this to the console market, its apples and oranges. The amount of xboxes sold and the market they are sold to just pales in insignificance compared to Apples domination of the world.
Also the gaming world has a much shittier nemesis, gambling. The loot box and microtransaction scandals have overshadowed any issues with store fees. I feel if these things hadnt been so big over the last decade, there would have been much more focus on the payment issues of app stores.
As a kicker, I feel that the courts would probably argue that the console world is very specific to gaming, and therefore is a much more targetted audience. Phones have apps for everrything that run your life, hell you cant even get a bus ticket or do any banking where Im from if you dont have a smart phone. So it is much more of a lifestyle device which is required to live in the modern age, whereas consoles are purely entertainment.
Steam also leans on the same anticompetitive "most-favored nation" agreements as Amazon. Sure, you don't have to list on Steam... but if you do, you better not try to go around their cut and list elsewhere at a lower price, either.
They have very positive mindshare with gamers but at the end of the day gaben's not your buddy either.
Steam lets you sell Steam keys directly or via a third party and they take a 0% cut. That's how places like greenman gaming, humble bundle, etc work. You still get to use all Steam's infrastructure but pay no fee.
that's a mechanism intended to grant keys to reviewers and such, you can't use that as a primary transaction mechanism. steam has an unspecified threshold at which they will kick you off the platform for abusing that, they aren't there to be a free delivery platform for external sales and if it makes up a plurality of your sales they'll pull the plug.
you'll note humble bundle isn't literally the only sales those publishers make on those games, or even a majority of their sales, and it's also something that's specially blessed by valve. if you pull that as a random shit publisher not through humble bundle you'll get kicked off.
It's mostly about intent: just about no one on the planet looks at the marketing for a PlayStation 5 and expects to be able to use it to file their taxes. That device is sold as a multimedia platform; that it happens to be a general purpose computer with software locks is irrelevant to it's stated purpose. The consumer is pretty well aware of what they're getting.
Not so with your average Apple device with access to the App Store, outside of maybe the TVs these days. The iPad ad that made all the headlines recently was clearly trying to bill it as a general purpose everything device with few if any such limitations. In terms of how the devices are marketed to consumers, it's night and day, and that does make a huge difference when trying to determine if consumers have been mislead by shady business practices.
> just about no one on the planet looks at the marketing for a PlayStation 5 and expects to be able to use it to file their taxes
Ah, this old chestnut of circular reasoning. It's not a general purpose computer because people think it isn't, so they don't use it as one because it's not a general purpose computer.
> The consumer is pretty well aware of what they're getting.
Is the consumer not well aware that iOS is a walled garden?
I should clarify that I don't personally hold this particular chestnut. A computer is a computer, and I'll remove the locks and run whatever software I please. I make homebrew games as a hobby, after all.
But regulators don't tend to write laws based on the actual tech, as much as how it gets used. That's the disconnect, but it still helps to try to understand the other point of view.
Primarily. Some can also play Blu-ray disks and all can stream music and movies from a bunch of different sources. The PS5 also has integrations with some social media sites and a built-in web browser. The PS5 Game Base application also lets you call and text other PS5 users.
> You're seriously asking me how is Playstation OS targeted at games?
We know the OS is great for games. What I'm asking is why it's not good for other things (the OS kernel is FreeBSD 11).
The PS2 and 3 had full user Linux support so those were obviously general purpose PCs. They removed Linux support for the PS4 and 5 though and apparently that seems to be enough for many people here to no longer think of them as computers.
If the dividing line between general purpose computer and appliance is in how the manufacturer lets you use it, then what functionality would the iPhone need to lose to in order for you to stop thinking the iPhone is a general purpose computer?
15% can still be too much. Alternative music, book, etc stores often have high IP payments that make the business case impossible because 15% is more than the profit margin. And apple doesn't have that 15% for it's music and book store. It's the definition of monopoly privilege.
AFAIK, steam doesn't prevent developers from also allowing their games to be installed outside of steam (if so, then that's a problem).
It's the fact that there's no alternative to get spotify, etc onto your phone that's the ultimate issue. The security of the app store in an enourmous advantage, but they're using it to extract huge premiums.
Like it or not, our phones have become the primary medium we use for news, entertainment, etc. If it were me, I'd allow side-loading of apps onto the app store, but they'd then have zero access to your contacts, unique phone IDs, and strict privacy rules. Apple could still enforce malware via the apple subscription. Essentially, they can make it like MacOS, but not allow any unsigned apps.
There are lots of things worth criticizing about Apple's model, but I'll never understand the fixation on the 30% rule. They provide a distribution platform that is every bit as robust and has a much larger reach than the video game consoles, and if they want to charge the same prices as the consoles I don't see why that's the hill to die on when there are so many other things that are more obviously rotten.