I remember this coming up during the Epic vs Apple trial. The argument at the time was that the console maker's closed ecosystem and 30% cut was justifiable due to the hardware itself not being profitable vs. Apple where the hardware is hugely profitable on it's own, thus arguing that the business models weren't comparable in terms of how much of a cut a platform owner gets. IE - without a 30% cut Apple would still make a lot of money while console makers would likely go out of business due to needing to make the hardware profitable on its own which would likely lead to greatly reduced sales of consoles as the cost would increase dramatically.
The argument then being that Apple's OS devices (iOS specifically in this case as there are other storefronts on MacOS) should be treated more similarly to PC software development as competing storefronts, while reducing Apple's revenue and profits, would not turn their mobile business ventures (phone, tablets, etc.) unprofitable or untenable.
Of course, the fly in the ointment is Nintendo which does sell their hardware at a profit. So perhaps the future of console gaming is hardware that is more similar to Nintendo's consoles than to Sony or Microsoft's consoles?
Regards,
SB
Apple's model is different than Google's and Apple never pretended its model was something it wasn't. Apple never tried to convey that its OS is open while using its app store as a tool to keep smartphone manufacturers from supporting forked versions of iOS with non Apple stores. It’s like opening a Walmart versus opening an open market venue where vendors pay for space and are supposed to get to sell whatever they want. But actually don't because the open market owner has rules and restrictions that forces vendors to sell only goods that provides a profit cut to the owner.
It’s hard to argue that Google wasn’t engaging anti-competitive practices when it threaten to pull Google Play support if smartphone manufacturers preloaded Epic wares on their Android based devices.
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