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Japan to open up Apple and Google app stores to competition
- adhvaryu 3y agoThis sounds great, wonder how Apple will react and maybe EU should follow suit.
- martimarkov 3y agoThe EU already did
- unpopularopp 3y agoIs there a reason this is more important than say on consoles? Why does no one push for sideloading on Switch and PS5, what's the difference?
- candiddevmike 3y agoThey should allow sideloading too, but phones have more scale and reach and create an effective monopoly for getting apps onto customer's devices.
- jbverschoor 3y agoPhones have a higher impact with regards to malware
- ReptileMan 3y agoConsoles are single purpose devices, phones are general purpose ones. Far more phones than consoles. Phones are much more useful and integrated. Consoles are sold at a loss which complicates things. Btw - I totally support the idea of homebrew and sideloading on consoles. But the phones are the elephant in the room.
- pnpnp 3y agoConceptually I understand this. In order to be codified, I think the legal system needs to come up with clear and accepted differentiation between the two.
- jsnell 3y ago> Consoles are sold at a loss which complicates things. It doesn't really. Nobody forced the console makers to adopt that business model, and they must have been aware of the regulatory risks. They chose to do it anyway.
- ReptileMan 3y agoTrue but so far the common view is that when you buy something subsidized you play by the rules of the person that subsidizes it. Like buying a phone from a carrier and it locking only to it's sim cards and so on. Of course as a consumer you must have a right to break vendor lock in (free market and competition is good right), but in case of subsidized goods you should also expect some kind of additional fee for the unlock.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> True but so far the common view is that when you buy something subsidized you play by the rules of the person that subsidizes it No thanks
- josephcsible 3y agoWith carrier-subsidized phones, you sign a contract at the time of purchase agreeing to those rules, and if you don't like them, you can pay full price for an unlocked phone instead. With game consoles, you don't sign any such contract, and the manufacturer won't sell you an unsubsidized unlocked one.
- twobitshifter 3y agoI could be wrong, but I don’t think there are any laws specific to general purpose computing, and the internals of newer consoles in particular are just PCs. The fact that they’re able to do this is an exclusive carve-out from PC gaming for a few manufacturers. Yeah, they sell at a loss, but it’s at a cost to their competitors and PC gamers. Absent this, a gaming PC would cost more than a PS5 but it would also run xBox exclusives, people wouldn’t have 2 consoles, and they could use their gaming computer for things other than gaming!
- exitb 3y agoThat would probably cause large changes to the pricing model, as consoles are often sold at loss, at least initially.
- jamespo 3y agoSome consoles are sold at a loss to be made up by software, so sideloading if it allows warez in would totally break the model. I suppose you could have some sandboxed playground, but you could argue a PC is a viable competitor that already allows sideloading.
- fkyoureadthedoc 3y agoFor some reason I don't think if Apple started selling iPhones at a loss and charging $60 for apps that they'd avoid regulatory scrutiny.
- kitsunesoba 3y agoI've not seen updated stats in a long time but saw blog posts from game devs several years ago showing that on Android, there's quite a bit of piracy going on for many one-time-purchase apps, especially games. While these devs aren't suffering from having to eat the cost of a loss leader, mobile app prices have been driven down to almost nothing for nearly the entire existence of the App Store/Play Store, making the impact of piracy just as bad if not worse for a different reason. While people pirate PC games, there's also a lot of people who pay the full $60US price on Steam which comparably softens the impact.
- izacus 3y ago> Some consoles are sold at a loss to be made up by software, so sideloading if it allows warez in would totally break the model. This hasn't been true for Xbox One / PS4 / Switch and all following generations. Meaning - it hasn't been true for a decade. Please stop defending corporations with these out-of-date arguments :/
- meibo 3y agoAnother answer could be that Sony and Nintendo have huge lobbying power in Japan, and they don't want to undermine some of their most important industries. You could argue that the business model of consoles also doesn't support this, but Apple arguably also makes a fortune on their 30% lock-in charge. They are probably double-dipping though, since the margins on iPhones must not be all too bad.
- mangoscango 3y agoPrimarily, it's just because game consoles are not general purpose computing devices, customers don't expect that kind of software support in the first place. But even if we wanted to change that, the consoles are all priced around this lock in. Generally speaking, consoles are sold at a loss during their first few years in production, under the assumption they will make money on software sales. If you no longer have to buy software the manufacturer gets a cut of, it no longer makes sense to subsidize the cost of the hardware. If this were to change, consoles would have to be more expensive in general. This is not the case in the smartphone market, Apple is making healthy profits on every iPhone sold.
- l33t233372 3y agoI would argue that phones are not general purpose computing devices either.
- izacus 3y agoAnd your argument would be bad.
- Shared404 3y agoTo elaborate on this, I know many people who's only general purpose computing device is a phone. It's what they use for all their web browsing, email, communications, writing. All of it. These people don't care that you can't compile code on their phone. They just care that they can use it for their general purpose needs.
- Toutouxc 3y agoBut why? I didn't buy an iPhone to be a general purpose computing device, I bought it to be an appliance that allows me to place calls, text my friends and take photos. Is there a magical force of nature that automatically transforms any device with a sufficiently powerful CPU into a general purpose device? Is there a FLOPS limit above which you're supposed to support general purpose tasks? Why is it that my washing machine is exempt from the rule but my cellphone isn't? I mean, I'm not even on anyone's side here, I don't really care that much if they allow sideloading in iOS (I could think of a few reasons to use it, but I probably won't), I run a headless Linux machine to tinker with, I can build a gaming rig, I can and do all kinds of general purpose computation but I just don't think of my iPhone as a computer and I'd like to understand how someone who does is objectively more correct than me.
- verst 3y agoThis is of course cynical, but naturally they wouldn't want to allow sideloading on Japanese platforms which hurt Japanese companies. I've recently been playing around with Switch Homebrew and sideloading - mostly so I could extract my savegames to play games I own on PC instead using the Yuzu emulator (4K 60fps is more fun). Apparently Nintendo is quite good at detecting modified software on the Switch and will permanently ban and brick your hardware, so you need to go through great lengths not to connect to Nintendo servers when booting the modified or sideloaded software.
- josephcsible 3y agoWhy hasn't Nintendo been sued for permanently bricking people's hardware?
- skulk 3y agoI'm pretty sure they don't brick your hardware, they just permaban you from their network. No more laggy Smash Ultimate netplay I guess.
- verst 3y agoI have fortunately not run into this problem yet - but all the Switch homebrew forums, Reddit communities and other sources say that your console becomes completely useless. You aren't just banned from online play and store. According to what I read it seems that even offline use will not work at that point.
- OatmealDome 3y agoNintendo only bans for cheating in online games or installing pirated software. Nintendo has (so far) not issued any bans for just installing or using custom firmware. There is no circumstance in which Nintendo remotely bricks your console. When you get banned for cheating, you are banned from that specific game's servers. When you get banned for installing pirated software, you get banned from all Nintendo Switch online services. The console can continue to be used fully offline.
- crazygringo 3y agoLegally, the distinction is totally arbitrary. None of this is being decided on any kind of broader principles, because you're exactly right -- there's zero good answer as to why iPhones should be forced to allow sideloading but not PS5's. In fact, I'd go so far as to say there's something quite unfair about it all, precisely because there's no consistent moral or legal principle whatsoever being applied here. But in practice, it's simply because for whatever reason, restricting apps on a phone bothers people more than restricting games on a console. We live in democracies, and laws get passed because people want them, not because they're consistent or make sense. Maybe because people think of phones as deriving from computers and you can install whatever you want on a computer, while game consoles have been locked down since basically the beginning, so it's just a question of what people are used to. People sometimes use the argument that game consoles are sold at a loss and therefore require being locked down, but that's irrelevant. In the same way Europe (and now Japan) are forcing Apple to change its business model, they could easily force Sony to change its business model as well, so it would be forced to sell consoles at full price.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y agoTo be fair, consoles could be forced to open app stores too. Console make money on the sdk, from my understanding. Opening app the store would not force them to give access to the sdk, isn't that the case?
- EMIRELADERO 3y agoThe EU's Digital Markets Act could, in theory, allow for consoles to be unlocked and used freely. There's nothing in the Act that specifically leaves them out (or puts smartphones in, for that matter). It's device-agnostic, the only thing that matters are the usage numbers.
- crazygringo 3y agoIt may be device-agnostic by the letter, but not in spirit -- it's widely understood that the usage numbers were specifically chosen as a mechanism to cover phones but not consoles. This happens regularly in laws and regulations, where you can't write a law singling out one or more companies by name, so certain thresholds are chosen to achieve the same end.
- amadeuspagel 3y agoThe phone is the center of digital and economic life. No one needs a console.
- jeroenhd 3y agoI don't see why they shouldn't. Consoles are just computers with funny keyboards, why do Microsoft and Sony get to decide who does and doesn't get to make games or applications for them?
- izacus 3y ago> Is there a reason this is more important than say on consoles? Why does no one push for sideloading on Switch and PS5, what's the difference? Every single member of homebrew communities is pushing for that, why are you claiming they don't exist? Phones and tablets just get priority because they affect multiple markets and massive chunk of economy (pretty much all B2C and a lot of B2B software) due to popularity of pocket computers and their critical position in everyones lives. Sony doesn't dictate what kind of software Japanese banks can build for their customers, US Apple/Google corporation however do and thus control big parts of their economies. OF COURSE that's what they're prioritize over video games.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoThere is absolutely no reason. The digital fiefdoms of gaming companies must be abolished and outlawed as well. They do nothing but harm consumers. For example, there's often no technical reason why one platform can't play online with another but these corporate lords impose heavy prices on such functionality with the aim of strengthening their little fiefdoms.
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- matheusmoreira 3y agoGreat, this is a huge step forward. Hopefully it will be the norm worldwide. Next step is limiting stuff like remote attestation so users can't be punished for exercising their freedoms.
- charcircuit 3y ago>Next step is limiting stuff like remote attestation so users can't be punished for exercising their freedoms. It wouldn't be needed if those people "exercising their freedoms" were not using it to abuse platforms. When you simply want to add a leaderboard in your game remote attestation makes it easy to filter out all cheated attempts from people sideloading a hacked version of your game. Remote attestation does not limit your freedom to modify things. It just allows platforms to be able to tell if you are using a vanilla version of the app.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago> It wouldn't be needed if those people "exercising their freedoms" were not using it to abuse platforms. It's not your platform, it's my computer. To even call it abuse is to assume these corporations even get a say in what happens in our machines. They don't. > When you simply want to add a leaderboard in your game remote attestation makes it easy to filter out all cheated attempts from people sideloading a hacked version of your game. Total non-issue. What's a bunch of video games compared to our freedom? We should cede control to corporations because some people might cheat at video games? Ridiculous. > Remote attestation does not limit your freedom to modify things. It just allows platforms to be able to tell if you are using a vanilla version of the app. Self-contradictory. They should not be able to tell at all. Otherwise you get locked out of your banking service if you try to exercise even a minimum of control over how much surveillance you're subjected to. We should be able to have complete control over everything and they should have to accept that as a precondition for their very existence as a corporation in the market.
- charcircuit 3y ago>It's not your platform, it's my computer. Someone who is running a leaderboard server is doing so on their computer and not yours. >these corporations even get a say in what happens in our machines That is not what remote attestation is about. Remote attestation lets the "corporation" ensure that a client using their servers is running the software that the corporation intends to have connect to the server. >What's a bunch of video games compared to our freedom? In my example you are still free to cheat at the game. You just will not be able to submit your cheated scores. >Otherwise you get locked out of your banking service if you try to exercise even a minimum of control over how much surveillance you're subjected to. Allowing for modifications to remove "surveillance" also will allow mods that add backdoors for people to steal your credentials and make actions on your behalf. >We should be able to have complete control over everything This is complicated because bad actors can install malicious software if there is a way to change anything or bad actors can social engineer people into installing the malicious software.
- duringmath 3y agoAndroid already allows sideloading
- jeroenhd 3y ago"The government will create a list of what OS providers must not do in order to stop them favoring their own services and payment platforms." I assume this means Google will no longer be able to force you to pay through their platform (and pay the 15-30% tax).
- neonate 3y agohttps://archive.ph/bk72p https://archive.ph/bk72p http://web.archive.org/web/20230618101808/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/06/16/business/japan-apple-google-apps-stores/ http://web.archive.org/web/20230618101808/https://www.japant...
- submeta 3y agoWhenever an article demands more freedom and more user rights on Apple platforms, it irritates me to see an enormous amount of participants arguing against it, defending Apple‘s practices. I am wondering if these are consumers who do not want freedom, or an army of paid people who scan forums to defend Apple‘s practices.
- user432678 3y agoI personally would like to have side loading on Apple devices, but also I have four different game stores on my PC because some games are not available on the others. And hate it so much.
- jeroenhd 3y agoSerious game store competition has improved Steam a lot. Epic Games may be a shit company, but they keep Valve on their toes and we're all better for it. GOG is also ahead in many ways, like how their launcher integrates with every other launcher so you only really need to open GOG if you want to play games. Shitty stores that only offer their maker's products (uPlay, Origin, Battle.net) don't need to compete, so their experience is usually crap. Most of those have vanished these days, though.
- thefounder 3y agoI personally hate the stores and the games that require you to "login" or even worse subscription based games.
- chilie 3y agoI help maintain the phones/computers for several non-technical and/or elderly family members. Their computers are a mess. No matter what pro-active measures I take, every time I get involved, they have a bunch of nonsense installed doing who-knows-what. Random apps, most of which are running all the time, slogging down the system. The younger folks have different game-stores, or other similar things, all running in the background. The computers are slower than mud. Their phones are all fine. They may download crap, but I know it is almost impossible for it to mess things up outside of that individual app. I'm not saying this to completely defend Apple - I honestly don't know which side of the App Store/sideloading debate I fall on. I'm just pointing out that there are huge benefits, particularly for the general population of non-techincal users, to Apple remaining as a gatekeeper (albeit obviously a quite imperfect one).
- firechickenbird 3y ago> The government hopes that the move will spur competition and lead to app price drops Most apps are free. The paid one are also already very cheap
- ronsor 3y ago"Free" with in-app purchases that can easily eat one's entire paycheck.
- falcolas 3y agoYou’re right. But this is wholly tangential to the discussion; an alternative storefront will not change MTX practices.
- Laremere 3y agoThey are free mostly because they have in app purchases, which the stores take their cut of. It's easy to see the stores provide some of the value in the transaction, but 30% is an amount which would be arbitraged away with some real competition.
- ur-whale 3y agoThis is not about the price of apps. It is about running what you want on a device you own. You may not have realized it, but you do not own your Apple device anymore, in the sense that you can't run what you choose on it. You are only allowed to play in Apple's carefully tended village. I'd recommend re-watching The Prisoner [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner
- charcircuit 3y ago>in the sense that you can't run what you choose on it Do you not own a washing machine if you can't use it to render 3D videos on the computer inside? A washing machine being a washing machine is just what the device is. If you own an iphone the expectation is that you can run iphone apps. Apple never advertised that you can run anything on it.
- ur-whale 3y agoLooks like the long arm of American crony capitalism isn't long enough to reach across the Pacific. Very good for Japan.