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Not at all. There isn’t much second or even third order thinking around these issues and the precedents set to retail as a whole. It's clear to anyone that look
by sbuk 6y ago
Not at all. There isn’t much second or even third order thinking around these issues and the precedents set to retail as a whole. It's clear to anyone that looks at this on merit as to what Epic are trying to do and, much like Facebook, they just don’t care about the consumer or the little man, despite what they say. Quite the contrary, it’s all about the bottom line.
A lot of discussion has gone into what the 30% covers - it is arguably too high. At the same time, it would be interesting to see what Epic sees as the cost impact of hosting and distribution along with the cost of data security and what protection for their customers privacy they will put in place, were they permitted to have their own store.
- ganoushoreilly 6y agoYou could go as far and look at the costs to run their own store on Pc.
- gelert 6y agoUnfortunately Epic's store on PC is being run at a loss in order to win market share and not expected to be profitable for another 2-5 years. So that wouldn't be a great comparison. The cut they take for their store is 12% but compared to other launchers on PC they provide appreciably worse features.
- spideymans 6y agoIf Epic is indeed taking a loss at 12%, Apple’s 30% cut doesn’t seem all that unreasonable anymore.
- snuxoll 6y agoEpic is taking a loss at 12% by spending a whole bunch on exclusivity agreements to try and get gamers into a store nobody wants. It’s honestly a perfect example showing that Apple has little to fear - users have preferred marketplaces and are hesitant to shop outside them.
- smiley1437 6y agoAgreed, if they can't even run their own store properly, will they spend the time and effort to police the apps to the same standards as Apple? Doesn't seem likely.
- philliphaydon 6y agoI’m impartial to the 30%, but I don’t want Apple to allow payments to be done via other vendors other than Apple. I trust Apple with my credit card, but I don’t trust epic. My biggest fear, although I don’t think it will ever happen, is apple being forced to support other stores on iPhone, and someone like Facebook moves their app over due to it allowing them to farm data, or games moving over using their own credit card provider and not knowing where my details are going.
- pydry 6y agoI don't think anybody would have a problem with forcing vendors to allow the use of Apple Store payment as an option. I'm impartial to having a variety of payment options, some more expensive and theoretically trusted than others.
- will4274 6y agoAnd this is what Apple already does, e.g. with federated identity - you must offer AppleID, you can offer others as well. A scheme like this enables iOS users without being anti competitive.
- ryandrake 6y agoAs soon as Apple allows multiple app stores, it's going to be the same crappy situation as we have on PCs: Every goddamned software developer is going to insist on having its own app store. Want an Adobe product? You have to install Adobe's store. Want an Epic product? Epic's store. Want Minecraft? Microsoft store. You'll end up with all these crappy little stores all over your device. Then you'll have store exclusives, and you'll need to search through dozens of stores whenever you want to find something. Yuck!
- pydry 6y agoI doubt that these companies will introduce that level of friction without good reason. Assuming a competitive market the number of app stores and their markup should dwindle. It's not like we are overwhelmed with app stores on Android.