> if Epic's action is the beginning of the end of exclusive stores, then go, Epic, go!

That's ironic given that the Epic Store is quite well known for buying exclusive rights to new game launches.

IDK, it doesn't seem ironic to me. Being the only store that sells something is pretty different from being the only store allowed in town.

They pay game companies to make sure they're the only store in town for popular new releases. There are other stores for other games, but not the Epic exclusives. Just like there are other stores for Android than Google Play, but lots of stuff uses Play Services and thus can't work without Play.

The obvious difference is that those game developers have the choice to be exclusive to the epic store, or steam, or neither or whatever. They are making the choice.

And game developers have a choice to not develop for iOS, but they do anyway.

It's not the same. Anyone who wants to develop a SaaS offering that requires a mobile app, which is basically everything nowadays, MUST take into account Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store because almost all of the target users will have those devices.

A game developer selling an exclusive to Epic is much different. They're not gatekeeping the platform which is the PC and no one is being forced to use the Epic store for distribution to get their games on the PC.

So to get access to 100% of the market on mobile platforms, you MUST deal with Apple AND Google. To get access to 100% of the market for anything on the PC platform you MAY deal with Epic, Steam, all of the above, or self-distribution. The difference is that developers get to choose which distribution strategy and platform makes the most sense for them in terms of cost, support, target audience, etc..

It's like if Walmart and Target were the only stores in North America and most buyers only shopped at one or the other. Would "choosing" not to sell your product at Walmart be a real option at that point?

The difference there is there is no other way to distribute iOS Apps. Period.

There are so many ways to distribute PC games and software, you cannot even begin to enumerate half of them.

Mostly the same on Android too. With a simple toggle, you can then install other App Stores like Amazon's, etc. Many phones come with alternative App Stores pre-installed too.

Even if Epic isn't directly suing them at this time, a ruling against Apple and/or Google for their store behavior will hit every other app/game store operator. Arguably, there's limits to how many companies Epic can go after at once, and they have to pick their battles somewhat politically, I imagine. But if an Apple or Google behavior gets ruled unlawful in court, and Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo is doing it, Epic probably won't even have to sue to make them drop it.

I really hope they are next in line. Hardware owned by users preventing the users to from whatever they want on it is stupid & dangerous.

I largely agree with the gist of your comment. I am not sure average user sees that much of a change from either of those corporate powers.

Now, there may be some interesting changes for the players and I here I am genuinely unsure, which one is least bad .

I am watching this fight unfold and see no one I am willing to back here. But.. the resulting fight may end up having good results for the customer.

Time will tell.

Apple and Google are very vertically integrated and the combination of the two basically own the mobile market stack. While Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have their own bubbles, they don't own the whole gaming market. PC gaming is a huge and relatively open market.

Amazon has let you put your own books on Kindle since day 1. You are not restricted to their own store.

When you buy books on your Kindle, Amazon's store is the only one available.

Sure, but Kindle doesn't have an SDK or apps at all. There are however multiple phone apps and websites that let you loan or buy books and automatically push them to your Kindle.

The Kindle's SDK is called the Kindle Development Kit (KDK).

http://kdk-javadocs.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html

Which would kill the subsidised console market, nobody is going to buy a console for $600, and would just turn iOS into a clone of the fragmented dumpster fire that is the Android app ecosystem.

This is why we can't have nice things.

The subsidized console market is largely a myth anyway.

Consoles are mostly sold at slightly above the cost of manufacture, maybe 5%, but that's nowhere near enough to recoup the costs of development, distribution, marketing and maintaining the attached online services. To make a profit on them as a standalone consumer product MS and Sony would to charge another 30% to 40%. The bill of manufacture for a PS 5 is estimated at $450, that's why I said they would probably have to charge $600. The console market is highly price sensitive and we've seen time and again a premium of just $100 can kill a product.

Sony is also in the software business. Their hardware margins may be thin, but how profitable is Naughty Dog? Or Insomniac? What kind of money do they make from the subscription services sold on the console?

I'm not sure what you're implying. Are you saying Sony and Microsoft should just make less money?

It's entirely possible to lose money on consoles. Microsoft wrote off such a huge loss on the first XBOX, between $5bn and $7bn, that counting inflation on the losses they probably still haven't made a profit off it.

The other problem with that is it would make it flat out impossible for any other company ever to enter the console market. The up front cost is device losses would be staggering. It was bad enough for Microsoft as it is.

> Are you saying Sony and Microsoft should just make less money?

Not at all. I'm merely pointing on that their console business is composed of many streams and focusing on one part of it to the exclusion of others is deceiving. Supposedly, Return of the Jedi has never made money yet they kept making Star Wars movies.

> it would make it flat out impossible for any other company ever to enter the console market

I disagree. It's harder to compete with competitors that are selling their product below the cost of production. I've always wondered if an EU-based company came out with a console, what would happen? I think Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo would be forced to sell their consoles at or above cost in the EU or face dumping charges.

I don’t think it’s deceiving at all. If you don’t think it would lead to them to make less money, can you explain how?

It seems to me that if the consoles cost 1/3 more they would sell fewer of them (Lots of empirical evidence for this), and therefore sell fewer games and make less revenue on services to their smaller customer base, who now can by games from other publishers without the console vendor making a penny. After all isn’t the point of this to cut off their other revenue streams at the knees? I may well be missing something though.

The subsidies mostly aren't in exclusive cash - although they have a razor and blades style price shifting for upfront hardware and "console tax" on games but in "standardization" - having a big 3 or so system configurations to design and test for is easy and gives them a big market with just one and the biggest if across all 3 compared to Windows PCs and their minority of minorities mac and Linux share.

Too bad. I guess they'll have to find some other way to make money outside of rent.

Looking forward to a fun new App Store world. Just like streaming services it will fragment to many different subscribed stores, each with their own privacy and sharing policies, for temporary access to exclusive games. Nothing like a little offshore gaming or porn gaming to pass the time in class.