Once you decide to shop at wall-mart you can easily switch to other markets or buy items from other stores. not comparable at all.

If there were basically only Wall-Mart and Target to buy stuff from, and you had to commit to one for 2-5 years every time, you bet they should be under heavy scrutiny.

Sony and Microsoft are a better comparison, but different because 1) their consoles are huge loss leaders, phones are not and 2) they are way less essential and used by an order of magnitude less people than phones.

But the irony is that loss leaders are a sign of market abuse / market power. That's the normal anti-trust claim - predatory pricing. If anything, Apple is charging a premium price for their experience.

Apple has become essential and trusted in part perhaps because it has exercised near iron control over almost all aspects of their platform.

Unironically there should be alternatives for those platforms, and the Switch

I'd include walmart too if walmart is the only store I'm ever allowed to shop at.

Apple doesn’t force you to own an iPhone.

It does force you to use their app store for 2-7 years once you bought one until you replace it.

It doesn't. You're free to replace it and switch to android (or better - linux) at any moment.

In a world where walmart is the only store & it bans all other retail stores from existing, Walmart will become monopoly.

This is false equivalence

What do you call the Play Store? What do you call Android? Talk about false equivalence, you’ve just demonstrated that.

1.I have installed LineageOS which has 0 apps from Gogle

2. I have installed android apps from F_-droid/Samsung app store or even Vivo app store

3. I have directly installed apks which didn't appear on play store directly from the internet

Where is my false equivalence? Pray tell me?

Google makes it impossible for apps to run without play store but I've used 0 google apps on android for 1yr and lived easily with 0 issues

Remove apple's app store, I dare you and then tell me you can live for one year.

Apple has monopoly on app store.

Walmart can't be compared.

Google has technically enforced monopoly and which I oppose. I never said google play store isn't a monopoly.

Are you sure you know what false equivalence means?

Dude, you don't need to buy an iphone, you don't need to by an xbox, you don't need to buy a playstation - if you do though you will be using their stores / they will be getting a cut.

But when I buy Android I can side load app

If I buy Apple phone I can't sideload app. At all.

How ia this not a monopoly.

Also why you bring xbox into picture. It's a gaming console not a general purpose device ppl use 4+hrs in a day.

They can have their cut buthe issue that you're ignoring is that they don't allow side loading and that they can randomly kill any app they want. Like they have done in the past and small developers don't have the money Epic does

The Play Store has very little for tablets. The Android tablet market is effectively dead.

Depends on what you define as their game store. I can purchase a game that is playable on the xbox from anywhere that sells a copy. One of these places is the digital store that comes with the xbox. But I can also go to cd-keys, or amazon and buy a copy there that will still work on an xbox.

Wait, what? It doesn't matter where you buy an XBox game, Microsoft is getting their cut as platform holder no matter if digital or retail.

That's a licensing fee and separate to the discussion about market control. As it stands (although this is starting to change) a developer can sell the game through a variety of different avenues (online, brick and mortar, the xbox store), these avenues may have different prices associated and drive where the consumer makes their purchase.

That is the relevant comparison here, if Epic want to provide Fortnite on iOS they HAVE to use the app store and associated requirements. If they want to provide it on XBox, they pay a licensing cost for the proprietary tech they leverage from Microsoft. But they can choose to sell the game on Amazon if they want.

Even if they sell the game on Amazon, they still pay Microsoft a royalty for each game sold. Whether you want to call it a "licensing fee" or a "Microsoft tax" seems like a matter of semantics. Also keep in mind that their publisher agreement with Microsoft gives Microsoft approval rights over the game itself, marketing materials, and even packaging. And if they sell virtual goods in the Xbox version of the game they have to go through the Xbox store and pay Microsoft 30% of that.

The amount of control console manufacturers exert over the games allowed on their platform is not dissimilar to the Apple and its App Store.

I don't think you realize the permissions game makers need to even sell a CD that works on xbox. If that CD is not signed off on by microsoft - total control -> it's not going to work in your console - period. And the irony - EVEN IF microsoft does not market / distribute or accept payment for the game (Apple does all of this) I can guarantee you Microsoft (and sony) get a cut.

For now.

Look at the PS5: the ability to put a disk in is a legacy that's clearly going away by Sony making it an option you'll have to pay extra for. The entry level model is digital only, for better or worse.

That's definitely true, and as they move away from physical media more scrutiny of what they are doing is required. But as it stands this isn't yet an issue for game consoles

AFAIK, you can install 3rd party apps to Xbox without paying MS. If that is not true, it should be fixed.

There is still a retail market on consoles. So not entirely monopolistic. Also iirc you can use your own payment method on those consoles.