They planned to (or started putting the frog in the port with some lukewarm water) and got heavy push back from their partners. This is what precipitated Valve to make the Steam Machine.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377

Worth noting that one of the people complaining loudest was Tim Sweeney, ex. https://venturebeat.com/2016/03/04/epics-tim-sweeney-questio...

Which was a failure, because other than Valve and a couple of gamers, no one cares.

What was a failure?

Steam Machines.

MS and Windows is simply not related to the Apple situation, unless MS decided to only allow Windows on its own hardware thus creating a closed ecosystem.

The closest analogy to Apple is the game console industry. Even then it's a different scale.

IMO, the App Store situation is an entirely new class of problem unlikely to be solved in this case. It doesn't easily fall under existing monopoly regulation, and does have some advantages for consumers along with disadvantages. Unfortunately, I think Apple is being short sighted here. By not addressing the most egregious issues (30% for example), they are setting themselves up to be regulated which will probably end up being worse for everyone. A sledgehammer will end being used where a scalpel was needed.

> unless MS decided to only allow Windows on its own hardware thus creating a closed ecosystem.

I presume this was what the word "imagine" meant?

or any web browser doing this for e-commerce..