7 ms·

I don't know what other evidence one would need for antitrust. They have to my knowledge never produced a game, or a "real" console, yet they rake in more gami

by croon 5y ago

I don't know what other evidence one would need for antitrust. They have to my knowledge never produced a game, or a "real" console, yet they rake in more gaming money than any other? That's a hostage situation by any measure. Am I looking at this wrong?

falcolas 5y ago
> Am I looking at this wrong? IMO, yes. Their cut is the same as the big gaming companies (30%), they're just in more hands - they have a bigger market than the consoles. EDIT: TFA is comparing Apple to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo here, all of which have walled garden stores on their consoles, which all charge ~30%. This is rather important context.
- croon 5y ago
  If you're referring to Steam et al, I don't have to use Steam on my device.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    I'm referring to Sony's, Microsoft's, and Nintendo's console stores on the Playstation, XBox, and Switch respectively. Which, as a side note, you are forced to use on those devices.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Dang, I better go uninstall Retroarch from my Switch and Xbox then...
      - falcolas 5y ago
        And you can also root your iPhone... The comparison is still legitimate.
      - evilduck 5y ago
        Do you have a link to that for the Switch eStore? I'd love to check it out. Maybe an Amazon link for a Retroarch game cartridge I could buy?
        smoldesu 5y ago
        https://docs.libretro.com/guides/install-libnx/ https://docs.libretro.com/guides/install-libnx/
        evilduck 5y ago
        Oh, so you don't have those options to install Retroarch from Nintendo and you're ok with the Switch needing to leverage a hack to freely do what you want? How is this a qualitatively different situation from Apple then?
  - TimSchumann 5y ago
    The ‘Steam’ platform never appears on any list comparing financials. I suspect it’s because the parent company ‘Valve’ is privately held, not publicly traded.
  - evilduck 5y ago
    Apple's cut is the same as Xbox, Playstation and the Switch and you _do_ have to use their stores and their physical media sales also gets a cut. The Switch can already be hacked to run Android and play other games from other stores, the latest Xbox and Playstation are essentially just blessed configurations of PC hardware, but everyone is totally cool with that situation and those devices being locked down and restricted. Why is nobody up in arms about those? The standard being asked for and the outrage only being applied to Apple seems... fake.
    - howinteresting 5y ago
      Apple's devices are personal computing devices, not video game consoles.
      - falcolas 5y ago
        Not really. They're general computing devices which perform "blessed" activities. They simply have a broader (though, not that much broader these days - you can do a surprising amount on a console) range of blessed activities. Consoles still play games as a core competency, but they can also also run a broad array of apps. I can, for example, watch YouTube and Hulu, and browse the web, on my Switch.
      - evilduck 5y ago
        Please explain how the Xbox isn’t then. It has storage, runs applications, has a web browser, standard PC input peripherals and hard drives work for it. The hardware is essentially just PC hardware. It seems like marketing difference more than anything else.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      > Why is nobody up in arms about those? This made me think about why I'm more and more OK with hardware being limited to "blessed" activities. The older I get, the more time I like to spend doing activities, as opposed to spending time configuring software and hardware to do activities. I don't value getting things working as its own endeavor anymore. As such, and after spending several decades fighting Microsoft, Apple, and Linux to play videogames on my PC, I value a console's focus on playing games as their core competency. I like that I can turn on my playstation, pick a game, and not have to figure out the optimal settings for my graphics card, installation options, or wonder if my drivers are properly updated for this game. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's also no longer my job to perfect. I still use a computer to do general computing tasks, but it's only doing the tasks I can't do elsewhere. And those tasks are few in number, though great in importance to my hobbies.
zzbzq 5y ago
Possibly but not necessarily. For any rate of fees > $0, there exists a point at which mobile is so much more popular than consoles that Apple makes more money.
thehappypm 5y ago
Hostage situation, how? Developers are free to go to a huge number of competitor platforms. Apple does extremely well in an important market: wealthy people, people who can afford a $1000 smartphone will spend exponentially more than people buying a cheapo Android. The market they own happens to have the highest ARPU.
- croon 5y ago
  > Developers are free to go to a huge number of competitor platforms. There are no other platforms on the devices. Saying I can buy another house if I could only choose one electricity provider or ISP isn't a good defense (in those cases either).
  - falcolas 5y ago
    There are no other platforms on the Playstation, XBox, or Switch either (brought up, because those are the focus of TFA).
    - thebean11 5y ago
      So the question is, does the size of the market and the scope of it (gaming vs general purpose computing) matter?
      - falcolas 5y ago
        If you're looking for the number of potential customers for purchasing games - it absolutely does. More customers, more game purchases, more game revenue - even if the absolute percentage of game players is less. Just look at how big ATVI's mobile gaming revenue is: it rivals (and sometimes beats) the revenue from their "core" products (a'la Call of Duty).
        thebean11 5y ago
        But the size of potential customers for games is still much smaller than the market for a pocket sized computer (roughly everyone on earth). I was more talking about the size of the current install base of the platforms (iOS, Xbox etc) though.
windowsrookie 5y ago
They actually did make a game console in the 90's. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin
mattl 5y ago
Apple made games in the early days. The Apple II was built to be able to play Breakout amongst other things and the computer shipped with paddle controllers.
vmception 5y ago
I would say you are looking at this wrong, mainly that there are better arguments to support what you want to occur. For example, it is a weak argument to point out they have not produced a game or a gaming-first console, ie marketed to gamers primarily with the additional capabilities of doing other things. Gaming has been "the other thing". The reason being that antitrust and anti-monopoly actions from the government are to highlight antimcompetitive practices towards other competitors. Simply winning the lion share of the market has no regulation against it, becoming more vertically integrated or it being pure happenstance that consumers choose to generate revenue for you on the platform is not something we regulate. Now, by "hostage situation" you must be referring to the developers? You might have an angle here but not in a way that would really change anything. Antitrust regulation here would simply make Apple provide the ability for developers to have alternative payment methods. So, not clear exactly what you are referring to or want to happen. But I think there are stronger arguments to support what you want to happen. As long as Apple doesn't ever do anything to Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo etc in the gaming space, they'll be fine.
zepto 5y ago
> They have to my knowledge never produced a game, or a "real" console, yet they rake in more gaming money than any other? By this logic they have never produced a ‘real’ phone. Apple has invested hugely at every level in making iOS into a games platform.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  ...But they still can't be bothered to implement a real graphics API.
  - mcphage 5y ago
    What's wrong with Metal? (I'm not a game developer, so I don't know whether it's good or bad).
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      The problem with Metal is that it's not Vulkan. People don't care that Metal came first, especially not game developers who are transitioning deeper into the Vulkan pipeline year-after-year. Apple used to have pretty good gaming support on MacOS back when OpenGL and 32-bit apps were in vogue, but upon pulling the plug for those technologies and not offering a suitable cross-platform replacement, many developers just walked away from the platform entirely. Valve in particular completely dropped Proton support for MacOS, wiping out a lot of user's game libraries come Catalina. Now, Apple knows this. There are technologies (MoltenVK) that are actively being developed to fill this gap. A lot of this tooling is in it's infancy though, and requires an insane amount of overhead to run (doubly so on ARM). The current consensus is that Apple's graphics APIs are too unstable for most cross-platform titles to target, and most game studios would rather not divide their dev teams into "the Mac people" and "the every-other-platform people".
      - zepto 5y ago
        So it is a real graphics api, just not the one you’d prefer.
jelly 5y ago
You don't get to exclude iPhones and iPads from being "real" consoles - you can play games (and sell them) on almost any general computing device. Steam has been doing that for years and I suspect they beat Xbox/PlayStation revenues too.
- croon 5y ago
  Yes, they have been doing it on a platform (Windows, originally) that didn't come preinstalled with it, by being better than any other storefront, even when taking 30% and you have other options. Appstore is doing it by being the only allowed storefront on a general computing device. So yeah, your comparison is great if you mean to say that Appstore and Steam should compete under the same conditions. Get Steam onto iOS and we'll see if the store cuts stay the same, for either party.

by croon 5y ago

falcolas 5y ago

> Am I looking at this wrong? IMO, yes. Their cut is the same as the big gaming companies (30%), they're just in more hands - they have a bigger market than the consoles. EDIT: TFA is comparing Apple to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo here, all of which have walled garden stores on their consoles, which all charge ~30%. This is rather important context.

croon 5y ago
If you're referring to Steam et al, I don't have to use Steam on my device.
- falcolas 5y ago
  I'm referring to Sony's, Microsoft's, and Nintendo's console stores on the Playstation, XBox, and Switch respectively. Which, as a side note, you are forced to use on those devices.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Dang, I better go uninstall Retroarch from my Switch and Xbox then...
    - falcolas 5y ago
      And you can also root your iPhone... The comparison is still legitimate.
    - evilduck 5y ago
      Do you have a link to that for the Switch eStore? I'd love to check it out. Maybe an Amazon link for a Retroarch game cartridge I could buy?
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        https://docs.libretro.com/guides/install-libnx/ https://docs.libretro.com/guides/install-libnx/
        evilduck 5y ago
        Oh, so you don't have those options to install Retroarch from Nintendo and you're ok with the Switch needing to leverage a hack to freely do what you want? How is this a qualitatively different situation from Apple then?
- TimSchumann 5y ago
  The ‘Steam’ platform never appears on any list comparing financials. I suspect it’s because the parent company ‘Valve’ is privately held, not publicly traded.
- evilduck 5y ago
  Apple's cut is the same as Xbox, Playstation and the Switch and you _do_ have to use their stores and their physical media sales also gets a cut. The Switch can already be hacked to run Android and play other games from other stores, the latest Xbox and Playstation are essentially just blessed configurations of PC hardware, but everyone is totally cool with that situation and those devices being locked down and restricted. Why is nobody up in arms about those? The standard being asked for and the outrage only being applied to Apple seems... fake.
  - howinteresting 5y ago
    Apple's devices are personal computing devices, not video game consoles.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      Not really. They're general computing devices which perform "blessed" activities. They simply have a broader (though, not that much broader these days - you can do a surprising amount on a console) range of blessed activities. Consoles still play games as a core competency, but they can also also run a broad array of apps. I can, for example, watch YouTube and Hulu, and browse the web, on my Switch.
    - evilduck 5y ago
      Please explain how the Xbox isn’t then. It has storage, runs applications, has a web browser, standard PC input peripherals and hard drives work for it. The hardware is essentially just PC hardware. It seems like marketing difference more than anything else.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    > Why is nobody up in arms about those? This made me think about why I'm more and more OK with hardware being limited to "blessed" activities. The older I get, the more time I like to spend doing activities, as opposed to spending time configuring software and hardware to do activities. I don't value getting things working as its own endeavor anymore. As such, and after spending several decades fighting Microsoft, Apple, and Linux to play videogames on my PC, I value a console's focus on playing games as their core competency. I like that I can turn on my playstation, pick a game, and not have to figure out the optimal settings for my graphics card, installation options, or wonder if my drivers are properly updated for this game. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's also no longer my job to perfect. I still use a computer to do general computing tasks, but it's only doing the tasks I can't do elsewhere. And those tasks are few in number, though great in importance to my hobbies.

zzbzq 5y ago

Possibly but not necessarily. For any rate of fees > $0, there exists a point at which mobile is so much more popular than consoles that Apple makes more money.

thehappypm 5y ago

Hostage situation, how? Developers are free to go to a huge number of competitor platforms. Apple does extremely well in an important market: wealthy people, people who can afford a $1000 smartphone will spend exponentially more than people buying a cheapo Android. The market they own happens to have the highest ARPU.

croon 5y ago
> Developers are free to go to a huge number of competitor platforms. There are no other platforms on the devices. Saying I can buy another house if I could only choose one electricity provider or ISP isn't a good defense (in those cases either).
- falcolas 5y ago
  There are no other platforms on the Playstation, XBox, or Switch either (brought up, because those are the focus of TFA).
  - thebean11 5y ago
    So the question is, does the size of the market and the scope of it (gaming vs general purpose computing) matter?
    - falcolas 5y ago
      If you're looking for the number of potential customers for purchasing games - it absolutely does. More customers, more game purchases, more game revenue - even if the absolute percentage of game players is less. Just look at how big ATVI's mobile gaming revenue is: it rivals (and sometimes beats) the revenue from their "core" products (a'la Call of Duty).
      - thebean11 5y ago
        But the size of potential customers for games is still much smaller than the market for a pocket sized computer (roughly everyone on earth). I was more talking about the size of the current install base of the platforms (iOS, Xbox etc) though.

windowsrookie 5y ago

They actually did make a game console in the 90's. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin

mattl 5y ago

Apple made games in the early days. The Apple II was built to be able to play Breakout amongst other things and the computer shipped with paddle controllers.

vmception 5y ago

I would say you are looking at this wrong, mainly that there are better arguments to support what you want to occur. For example, it is a weak argument to point out they have not produced a game or a gaming-first console, ie marketed to gamers primarily with the additional capabilities of doing other things. Gaming has been "the other thing". The reason being that antitrust and anti-monopoly actions from the government are to highlight antimcompetitive practices towards other competitors. Simply winning the lion share of the market has no regulation against it, becoming more vertically integrated or it being pure happenstance that consumers choose to generate revenue for you on the platform is not something we regulate. Now, by "hostage situation" you must be referring to the developers? You might have an angle here but not in a way that would really change anything. Antitrust regulation here would simply make Apple provide the ability for developers to have alternative payment methods. So, not clear exactly what you are referring to or want to happen. But I think there are stronger arguments to support what you want to happen. As long as Apple doesn't ever do anything to Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo etc in the gaming space, they'll be fine.

zepto 5y ago

> They have to my knowledge never produced a game, or a "real" console, yet they rake in more gaming money than any other? By this logic they have never produced a ‘real’ phone. Apple has invested hugely at every level in making iOS into a games platform.

smoldesu 5y ago
...But they still can't be bothered to implement a real graphics API.
- mcphage 5y ago
  What's wrong with Metal? (I'm not a game developer, so I don't know whether it's good or bad).
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    The problem with Metal is that it's not Vulkan. People don't care that Metal came first, especially not game developers who are transitioning deeper into the Vulkan pipeline year-after-year. Apple used to have pretty good gaming support on MacOS back when OpenGL and 32-bit apps were in vogue, but upon pulling the plug for those technologies and not offering a suitable cross-platform replacement, many developers just walked away from the platform entirely. Valve in particular completely dropped Proton support for MacOS, wiping out a lot of user's game libraries come Catalina. Now, Apple knows this. There are technologies (MoltenVK) that are actively being developed to fill this gap. A lot of this tooling is in it's infancy though, and requires an insane amount of overhead to run (doubly so on ARM). The current consensus is that Apple's graphics APIs are too unstable for most cross-platform titles to target, and most game studios would rather not divide their dev teams into "the Mac people" and "the every-other-platform people".
    - zepto 5y ago
      So it is a real graphics api, just not the one you’d prefer.

jelly 5y ago

You don't get to exclude iPhones and iPads from being "real" consoles - you can play games (and sell them) on almost any general computing device. Steam has been doing that for years and I suspect they beat Xbox/PlayStation revenues too.

croon 5y ago
Yes, they have been doing it on a platform (Windows, originally) that didn't come preinstalled with it, by being better than any other storefront, even when taking 30% and you have other options. Appstore is doing it by being the only allowed storefront on a general computing device. So yeah, your comparison is great if you mean to say that Appstore and Steam should compete under the same conditions. Get Steam onto iOS and we'll see if the store cuts stay the same, for either party.