You can sideload apps on Android, completely bypassing the play store. The case for epic is a lot weaker there.
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It will be difficult to argue that 27% market share is significant enough to trigger antitrust. Especially coming on the heels of this week's Qualcomm ruling.
None of those examples are companies who literally built an entire platform (software, hardware, storefront) and the userbase to go with it entirely on their own.
iPhone has a 27% market share. PlayStation's share is much closer to monopoly levels
No console have outright majority market share in the category they compete in, both in terms of TV entertainment and gaming overall, neither Xbox, PlayStation or Switch can be considered monopolys when alternatives exist like just building a home PC to play games on or get movies from something like a Roku stick, they pay the tax because they have to and don't really have a claim that the console holders stifle their means of competing in the overall market.
Phones are a little different since two companies account for the vast majority of revenue being generated worldwide, there is very little actual competition and easy to access alternatives for the end consumers, so it's easier to make the case that they are being unfairly treated by these platform holders.
Consoles are also generally sold with much tighter profit margins and sometimes even at a loss per device, phones generally sell for a profit and Google gives away Android for free with the expectation that they can monetize every user through services.
Well sure, but they simply won't invest nearly as much into R&D and manufacturing these consoles if the margins are too low, which would mean a lesser console, a pricier console or no console at all.
It's not really about "giving up" or shutting down the company - just like any other company they'll just try to find something else with significantly better margins.
Yeah, essentially this.
Nintendo got a lot of shit in the 80-mid90s for similar things until other company came around (Sony) and offered better deals for Third Party royalties. With time, Nintendo started to make better deals to stay competitive and regain support. Now every console maker asks around the same 30%. I suspect Apple (Jobs) studied console game royalties in detail when they were creating the App Store structure, and other competitors (Android) copied that. Until other "Sony" comes around and offers better deals, nor Google nor Apple or Sony/MS/Nintendo will voluntarily lower their margins. But Epic seems that wants to force them through litigation.
Genuine question, if we take into account R&D for Apple considering they literally develop their own processors and release new hardware on a yearly basis instead of every 5-7 years, is their hardware still sold for outrageous profit compared to something like consoles?
Oh you mean the IBM compatible platform, the same one that runs the entire planet because of the interoperability and freedom of running any software. That pesky, niche platform.
You know, the platform where many companies have duopolies or monopolies but there's always a choice and sometimes the big dogs don't even win or anything and can just watch. Where you can repair your own stuff and run and develop anything.
Look I'm not arguing that Apple locking down iOS is a good thing, just a lot of people make really disingenuous or malformed opinions about why huge businesses go to battle over their cut of the profits. Like comparing iPhones to hardware component businesses like Nvidia or AMD. They have completely different business models, the more apt comparison is iPhones vs Android (obviously) and then we just end up going down the rabbit hole of hardware profit margins wrapped up in a tightly controlled software ecosystem vs a more open ecosystem that harvests user data at every turn for an ad company.
iPhones simply have a lot of valuable customers to software companies, like Epic, and those companies just want to control as much of payout as possible. Profit margins attached to hardware sales isn't going to change that.A lot of Android phones sell on thin margins and they pulled the exact same stunt on the Play Store.
Thanks, I mean it wouldn't make much sense otherwise but these days you have to be ready for anything.
Android phones allow sideloaded apps, which means there are alternative markets available. Not sure if they're still around, but I know Amazon had one at one point, and there was one for porn games that Google didn't want one on their store. So competition exists in the mobile space, just not on iOS.
Its a good question, but generally they tend to sell for quite a higher price than their raw material price estimates and even higher than very similar competing products that needs to source similar components from third party vendors like Qualcomm, it would be surprising if hardware profits would be lower than the manufacturing R&D at this point, I'm sure there is a great article to be made around this subject alone.
I'm really not sure what your point is? That's a completely different business model than something like a console or phone.
Have you discussed businesses or corporations ever in your life? Reputation and goodwill are very real aspects of business, and we are witnessing Epic showing their entire ass and we're discussing that.
Yeah, I'm genuinely curious since Apple is, as far as I know, the only company that basically designs most of the hardware for their platform. I'd be willing to bet their R&D costs are much higher than any of the other phone manufacturers or the console makers.
So basically my point is, I'd love to see a more comprehensive breakdown of their expenses and margins before saying they charge an outrageous amount compared to other companies for their hardware.
So at the end of the day it seems Apple is bad here and console companies are fine because devs see the console 30% share as fair because of what they provide and they see Apples 30% far to large for what they provide.
It's worth noting that they currently have no ability to authorize any in-app purchases since they have no interface (or overlay) for this as of yet.
So I'm not sure if this is attributed to a policy of theirs or the fact that they can't. Traditional DLCs are sold with the standard cut via the client/store page.
Yeah, the platform that was built on Wintel dominance.
No, its because this is a videogame forum and some of us can't ever admit our favorite console company is also wrong.
Along with reusing their chip designs for everything, the iPhone 12 SoC is likely powering iPhones, iPads, Apple TV's and even MacBooks this year, the amount of money saved from outsourcing components probably massively outweighs the R&D costs at this point.
Either way, give praise where praise is due until they go back on that and make it anti-consumer.
I mean, if Epic has to show their ass in order for Apple to provide better benefits to developers wanting to use their platform, fuck it. Show your ass and show how Apple is being shitty at the same time.
My point is: the day the monopoly died (IBM) is the day the world slowly knew the world wide web, personal computing, programming became democratic and so did knowledge through search engines.
But yeah, let's give new generations walled gardens where a big bunch of profit goes to one corporation and that can pick and choose which competitor can be on it, just like Apple does with xCloud. Or you impose your own services killing competitors on day one (Play Services) and can make company close down because of it (Huawei being basically removed from the western market because Trump).
That is all well and everything because fuck Epic amirite.
Plenty of choices to run something else and no actual control of it. As the success of Ryzen and the flop of Windows Store, Windows ARM, Windows S, Windows X, have shown. The world runs on GNU/Linux, you know. Microsoft only got away with IE until they didn't, basically.
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In most territories a majority of Android phones are Samsung's, and include Samsung's app store. Samsung's app store will install the Epic Games Launcher and gives them everything they want.
It's much harder to demonstrate the harm when there's significantly less effect.
Am I right in saying on android people just downloading the apk file from elsewhere still get the updates and can purchase v bucks no problem.
Praise for what do you mean? The consumer isn't really factored in here since it's the same end result for them either way; they're just using the interface provided by the publisher instead of the distributor's.
I haven't tested it but in theory, yes that would still work just fine.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will be looking very closely at this case.
I imagine Epic pulled this off with Apple so they wouldn't have a major gaming company on their bad side and being more in the spotlight (as is anything with Apple involved). But their ultimate goal will be to enforce any change that might come out of this towards the big three.
I imagine Epic pulled this off with Apple so they wouldn't have a major gaming company on their bad side and being more in the spotlight (as is anything with Apple involved). But their ultimate goal will be to enforce any change that might come out of this towards the big three.
The praise being that they are not taking a cut from the in app purchases for games played on EGS. If they were taking a cut from those in app purchases, this entire debate on whether EGS is in the right or not would be null and void as they would be doing the exact same thing Apple is doing. Them allowing people to pay the developer directly instead of taking a cut themselves on those purchases is a good thing.
Put two videos out on it already actually. I think it's a terrible theory of a case that would have lasting negative ramifications across the entire industry were Epic to win.
If they can establish a lesser apple cut for everyone, this is cool. But its most likely just going to end up in nothing, or a lesser cut for only epic.
if that in turn ends up in a permanent 20% off all V bucks, that's cool for consumers. But right now it just seems like big Corp vs big corp, and they both want more money
if that in turn ends up in a permanent 20% off all V bucks, that's cool for consumers. But right now it just seems like big Corp vs big corp, and they both want more money
This is a serious question and I am not being snarky. Do you also apply this to Sony, Nintendo and MS for their closed platforms and %cut of sales on consoles? If not, why?
That's what I thought. So in theory Epic could actually host the apk file themselves and direct android users to the Web page to download it.
Good fucking god. You know what whatever, have fun with that Sweeney. Maybe this'll keep you preoccupied from moneyhatting more EGS exclusives.
(peak 2020 lmao)
Though I will absolutely laugh my ass off if they lose this and have to go crawling back.
Correct, I checked about an hour ago and saw that Epic Games was still downloadable from the Galaxy Store, which would then have a prompt to download Fortnite onto your phone from it.
Just by the sheer amount of kids that play this on their phones and tablets. I meant blow up in apples face btw.
I think the common sentiment is Apple/Google are worth too much money for a company like Epic to win. Which frankly is silly but we'll have to see how it plays out.
Except Sony and Microsoft both allow games to have sales within their games while taking a small cut. Apple and Google are just locking down the entire platform from even competing. There is a massive difference.
They did that for the longest time and even tried to run their own app store without putting much effort into it but people preferred to use the Play Store instead.
That should work, but as a user you also have to tell Android to trust third party executables coming from outside the Play Store and I believe you also manually need to download an updated apk if the core executable needs to be updated.