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> In the short term, Epic loses money by not having Fortnite on Apple devices. Will they though? For all the players who already had the app they still have ac
by cepp 6y ago
> In the short term, Epic loses money by not having Fortnite on Apple devices.
Will they though? For all the players who already had the app they still have access to Epic's payment system meaning they're making 20% more on those transactions. I'm not sure that new user purchases will be > 20% they make in the short term from those existing users.
- pedroma 6y agoWhat are they going to buy? All the new content is on the other platforms.
- an_opabinia 6y agoSo the court case will wind up being a moot point. This is a technology forum, so speaking of technology... maybe there will just be some radical streaming or delivery innovation, compatible with Mobile Safari today, that could really change the state of at least games and movies on iOS. I wonder why that hasn't happened sooner.
- bdcravens 6y agoThey have the app as long as they don't have to reinstall it (new or replacement phone)
- metiscus 6y agoPerhaps that works for epic as well, giving apple customers an incentive to move to a platform that allows side loading?
- thinkloop 6y agoNobody sideloads, especially not kids
- CydeWeys 6y agoKids are technologically clever, and so long as one of them figures it out it's gonna virally spread to the rest of them. That's certainly how it was for me in school. So, I suspect that lots of people are going to be sideloading in the very near future.
- bdcravens 6y agoThey're also fickle, so if you lose momentum for long, your target audience may move on.
- RonanTheGrey 6y agoIf my young cousins in a 3rd world country are any indicator, sideloading will lose its "fear factor" because these kids are doing insane things with devices these days, stuff I wouldn't have been able to nor had any will to do in their day. Even more so the ones in 1st world countries! e.g. I agree with you.
- floatboth 6y agoDefinitely less "insane things" these days than back in the day. I remember jailbreaking Sony PSPs for all my classmates in middle school :D Later when iOS became big, the only common "insane" thing was app store account sharing.
- metiscus 6y agoI don't think that is quite right. Fdroid and the Amazon app store are two prominent examples. While they don't have the same impact as the first party store, they also aren't Fortnite.
- btown 6y agoAn important part of this is that as far as I can tell, most AAA mobile games now ship all but the most fundamental "code updates" as updates to interpreted scripts/data files over the Internet, bypassing the App Store update mechanism. (Where does data end and code begin? That's a philosophical argument that historically Apple could look the other way on for high-performing mobile games with weekly or even more frequent event releases.) Part of the calculus must have been that Fortnite was stable enough, especially from a low-level and netcode perspective, that it could do without needing App Store updates to remain cross-play compatible in the medium-term.
- flingo 6y agoApple's iOS ToS specifically forbids downloading and executing code by the app. (with a definition of "code", and "execute" somewhere in the document) While you could technically hide this from them during the review stage, apple can stop any app from functioning on any iOS device connected to the internet by revoking the certificate, if they discover it at a later stage. Are there noteworthy apps that break this term in the wild?
- quelltext 6y agoThis clause is impossible to apply to games. Any level of a game contains at least some logic like NPC behaviors, event triggering etc. and I'm sure scripting is a standard component of every single game. Have you heard of Thimbleweed Park? It's basically a VM executing an adventure game language (like the creator's SCUMM VM in the past). That's on the App Store. Now if we specifically look at the downloading part, that would mean games on iOS cannot download new levels, which I think is done by a lot of games.
- nightcracker 6y agoThe clause is impossible to apply period. It's undecidable.
- flingo 6y ago
- jpollock 6y ago~25% (straight line) of their customer base churns to a new iPhone every year [1]. Those customers will no longer be able to download Fortnite. [1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/08/four-year-smartphone-upgrades/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/08/four-year-smartphone-upgrades...
- hu3 6y agoThey might now buy Android devices instead. It goes both ways.
- jay_kyburz 6y agoI thought it was also off Android right now.
- CydeWeys 6y agoNo, it's only off the Play Store. But you can still download and install it from elsewhere. iOS is unique in that you can only install apps through the store; there is no side-loading.
- anticensor 6y agoSideloading by developer access and by jailbreaking are things.
- CydeWeys 6y agoDoes the former require paying $99/yr to Apple? If so no thanks. And as for jailbreaking, the last time I jailbroke an iOS device was many years ago, and it never worked 100%. Every time I rebooted the damn thing it had to be connected to a computer to re-unlock it again. I don't know how the experience is now but it was terrible then. I haven't bought an Apple device since because I like the out-of-the-box ability to install whatever random stuff I want.
- _qulr 6y agoThe new Fortnite season 4, which should be very profitable, will not be available on iOS. Plus no new customers on iOS.