The contrast is stark compared to another of Google's own projects: Stadia. Much of this comes second hand as I wasn't on this particular team when they were w

The contrast is stark compared to another of Google's own projects: Stadia. Much of this comes second hand as I wasn't on this particular team when they were working on Stadia bring-up for proprietary AAA engine (I joined about 2 weeks before Stadia was officially canned). But the quality of support from Stadia for developers was leagues above what you get from Android. Every few weeks I'll hear from other team members how good it was working with Google for Stadia. The tooling was great. We got developer kit hardware. We had documentation and direct support channels and Google was actively managing outreach and development on tooling to ease transitioning into their systems (Google was one of the biggest driving forces behind DXC's SPIR-V target). Compare this against the same people commenting on the Android experience and it's the complete opposite. We're left out to dry with poor support while trying to target devices that barely work. What's the difference? Google actually had to fight to get us to come to their store. They had competition and weren't acting as a toll collector to a captive market. Game developers had the choice to tell Google to kick rocks, Xbox and PlayStation aren't going anywhere. Google had no choice but to play ball with good support and fair pricing. No such pressure exists on Mobile, and they crank the toll as a result.