Most gamers may not see Apple as a gaming company to the same extent that they see Sony with PlayStation as Microsoft with Xbox, but the iPhone maker remains the industry uniform with decisions made in the Apple App Store.
The company made the news several times later this week for App Store approval. Once for refusing a gaming app, and the other for approving one.
The denial was Microsoft’s xCloud gaming app, which the Xbox folks were not too psyched about. Microsoft xCloud has been one of the most substantial Xbox software platforms in a long time, allowing gamers to watch live streaming titles from the cloud and play console-quality games across multiple devices. It’s a huge effort that is a bit in the offing, but will probably officially start next month. The app was in a Testflight preview for iOS, but because Microsoft looked to print it after primetime, Apple did not say so quickly.
The app that was approved was the Facebook Gaming app that Facebook has been trying to push through the App Store for months to no avail. It was finally approved Friday after the company stripped one of its two core features, a library of playable mobile games. In a scathing statement to The New York Times, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said, “Unfortunately, we had to completely remove gameplay functionality to get Apple’s approval on the stand-alone Facebook Gaming app.”
Microsoft’s Xbox team also took the unusually aggressive step of calling out Apple in a statement which, in part, read, “Apple stands alone as the sole general purpose platform to deny customers cloud games and subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass “And it consistently treats gaming apps differently, applying more linear rules to non-gaming apps, even if they include interactive content.”
Microsoft is still a $ 1.61 trillion company, so I don ‘t think I’ll take the violin for granted, but iOS is the world’s largest gaming platform, something CEO Cook Cook proudly announced when the company launched its own game subscription platform. , Apple Arcade, launched last year. Apple likes to play at its own pace, and all these game-streaming platforms that are emerging at the same time seem to be just overcoming.
There are a few things about cloud gaming apps that seem to be in violation of some of the rules of the App Store, yet these rules are of course just guidelines written by Apple. For Apple’s part, they said in principle (full statement later) that the App Store had curators for a reason and that approving apps like this means they could not control the apps individually, which compromises the App Store experience.
To say that “the reason” seems disingenuous, because the company has long approved platforms to operate in the App Store without stamping approval on the individual pieces of content that are accessible. With “Games” representing the most popular category of the App Store, Apple is likely to do much more about keeping its own money right away.
CNBC analysis included Apple’s revenue for the Apple Store in 2019 at $ 50 billion.
When these cloud gaming platforms like xCloud scale with zero iOS support, millions of Apple customers, myself included, are actually pissed that their iPhone can’t do anything that their friend’s phone can. Playing console-class titles on the iPhone would be a substantial feature upgrade for consumers. There are about 90 million Xbox Live users there, a substantial number are iPhone owners I could imagine. The gaming industry is slowly turning to gaming subscription and cloud gaming networks as a move to encourage customers to try out more titles and discover more indie hits.
I’ve seen enough of these sagas to realize that sometimes parties will step out of these battles only as a tactic to get their way into negotiations and solutions, but it’s a tactic that actually only works if consumers have a reason to to take care of. Most of the larger App Store developer games have played in the background and come to light later, but at this point, the Xbox team no doubt sees that Apple is not only well placed to wage an App Store war amid growing attention to anti-trust over a case that seems entirely focused on maintaining its advantage in monetizing the games that consumers play on Apple screens.
CEO Tim Cook spent a lot of time in his Congress Zoom Room answering questions about perceived anti-competitiveness on the company’s store fragments.
The big tension point I could see behind closed doors is that many of these titles offer in-game transactions and just because that in-app framework is streamed live from a cloud computer does not mean that a user is not ‘I still use the content on an Apple device. I’m not sure if this is actually the point of controversy, but it seems like it’s a big threat to Apple’s ecosystem-wide app-raking app.
The App Store does not currently support cloud games on Nvidia’s GeForce platform like Google’s Stadia, which are also available on both Android phones. Both of these platforms are more limited in scope than Microsoft’s offering which is expected to launch with broader support and elicit a broader adoption.
While I can deny Apple’s wish not to have gaming titles that might not work properly on an iPhone due to system limitations, that argument does not apply so well to the world of cloud gaming where apps send translation buttons to the cloud and the cloud her back the next motor-displayed frames of her game. Apple is forced to become quite specific about what types of media apps fall under the term “reader”. The inherent interactivity of a cloud gaming platform seems to be the differentiation that drives Apple here – like the interfaces that allow gamers to launch titles directly with an interface that is much more specialized than some generic remote desktop app.
All of these platforms come after the company already launched Apple Arcade, a non-cloud gaming product created in the image of what Apple wants to think are the values it supports in the gaming world: family-friendly indie titles with no intrusive ads, no cumbersome microtransactions and Apple’s pending review.
The position of Apple’s driver in the gaming world has far from been a very positive impact for the sector. Apple has acted as a gatekeeper, but the fact is enough of the “innovations” that have been pushed through as a result of App Store policies have been great for Apple, but doubtful for the development of a gamer-friendly gaming industry.
Apple facilitated the advent of free-to-play games by pushing in-app purchases that have been recklessly abused over the years, as studios have been irresistibly pressured to structure their titles around principles of addiction. Mobile gaming has been one of the more insane areas of Wild West’s startup growth over the past decade and Apple’s mechanics for fueling fast transactions within these titles have moved fast and broken things.
Check out the top 200 gross games in the App Store (data via Sensor Tower) and you’ll see that all 199 rely solely on in-app micro-transaction to achieve that status – Microsoft’s Minecraft, ranked 50th cost $ 6.99 to to download, though it also offers in-app purchases.
In 2013, the company filed a class action lawsuit that began after parents filed with Apple for making it too easy for children to make in-app purchases. In 2014, Apple settled a $ 32 million lawsuit with the FTC over the same mechanism. This year, a lawsuit filed against Apple challenged the legality of ‘lootbox’ in-app purchases that gave gamers random digital prizes.
“Through the games it sells and offers to consumers for free through its AppStore, Apple participates in predatory practices that entice consumers, including children to engage in gambling and similar addictive behaviors in violation of these and other laws designed to protect consumers and prohibit such practices, “read the latest lawsuit.
This is obviously not how Apple sees its role in the gaming sector. In a statement to Business Insider in response to the denial of Microsoft’s xCloud business, Apple leaked its messages.
The App Store was created to be a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great business opportunity for all developers. Before they go to our store, all apps are tested against the same set of guidelines that are meant to protect customers and provide an honest and equal playing field to developers.
Our customers enjoy great apps and games from millions of developers, and gaming services can absolutely launch in the App Store, as long as they follow the same set of guidelines that apply to all developers, including submitting games individually for review, and appear in charts and search. In addition to the App Store, developers can choose to reach all iPhone and iPad users via the web via Safari and other browsers in the App Store.
The impact has – quite apparently – not been uniformly negative, but Apple has been playing fast and loose with changes in the industry as they benefit from motherhood. I will not act as many actions of Sony and Microsoft over the years have not offered similar fronts to gamers, but Apple exercises the sector-wide sway it holds, and operates the world’s largest gaming platform too often, and gamers need to be careful in trusting the owner of the App Store to make decisions that have their best interests at heart.
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