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The video game industry is not very satisfied with Apple at the moment.
In an attempt to extend an olive branch to game streaming services that were previously excluded from the App Store, Apple has announced a new set of guidelines that allow game streaming services like Microsoft xCloud and Google Stadia on the platform by first time.
Good, really? Incorrect. Many in the industry are up in arms over the new guidelines.
Old Apple rules blocked these streaming apps from the App Store, which essentially means you can’t use them on iOS devices like the iPhone. In August, when Facebook released its Facebook Games app for iOS, the social media company couldn’t include, well, any games.
At that time, Apple that the company reviews the content of the application before allowing it in the App Store. Since these video game streaming services offer an ever-changing line of game titles, Apple’s position was that these types of applications were not allowed in its App Store.
However, these streaming services are gaining popularity. So Apple has decided to open the doors of the App Store to services like xCloud and Stadia. However, and here is the deciding factor, according to him, all the games available on these services should be submitted to the App Store as a separate application.
The guidelines seem to totally contradict the purpose of these services.
“This continues to be a bad experience for customers,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement provided to Mashable. “Players want to jump directly to a game from their selected catalog within an app, just as they do with movies or songs, and not have to download more than 100 apps to play individual games from the cloud.”
Microsoft is right. Movie and music streaming services like Netflix and Spotify have apps on the App Store. And those services have an always updated catalog of multimedia content accessible directly from the application.
Imagine if Apple required Netflix to submit each movie first for approval before offering it on the platform? It doesn’t make much sense that video games are treated so differently. At least one expert believes that Apple has its reasons.
“Either Apple fundamentally misunderstands how game streaming works or these guidelines are designed to be game shy by ‘technically’ allowing those systems to work while ensuring that the requirements are so onerous that Microsoft, Google, and other promising players just don’t. ‘ t participate ”, Michael Futter, co-founder of the consultancy F-Squared and co-host of the Virtual economy podcast“Mashable said.” Apple’s new streaming guidelines communicate that the company has no interest in welcoming xCloud or Stadia to iOS. ”
Futter continued to question what this means for similar video game services like SteamLink. Valve’s streaming app allows users to access their library of PC games. This would appear to violate Apple’s new guidelines.
The Cupertino-based tech giant already has a rocky relationship with the gaming industry.
One of the most popular video games, Fortnite, is from the App Store due to a dispute over the terms of revenue sharing. The game’s developer, Epic Games, is involved in a legal battle with the iPhone maker over Apple’s anti-competitive practices when it comes to the App Store.
It is clear that Apple sees the gaming industry as a source of income and wants a generous portion of anything that generates income from the availability of iOS. But industry experts like Futter believe that Apple is really wasting a great opportunity.
“Apple may have taken a small step forward,” he explained. “But this looks more like a child’s demands than an actual gesture to embrace the non-mobile half of the roughly $ 150 billion gaming industry.”
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