Yes, Amazon Luna Apple dodges the rules of Apple’s cloud gaming – when will Nvidia and Google arrive?

You may be wondering: “Has Amazon just broken Apple’s App Store guidelines by bringing a cloud gaming service to the iPhone?” And I understand that, as I told you just last week how St Paul doesn’t allow Google Stadia anything close to its current form – and also looked like Amazon’s recently announced Luna Stadia. Won’t the same rules apply?

But the truth is that Amazon has an easy way to get completely closer to Apple’s Play Store rules – and it makes me wonder how long it will last before Google, Nvidia, Micro .ft and others claim it.

Short version: Amazon Luna is not a traditional app on iOS. It will never appear in the App Store, and it is not needed. Like Engage Reports, it is a progressive web application (PWA), which is mostly a fancy name for a website that you can launch and run from the rest of your web browser. Engage Says it can also appear as an icon on your home screen, making it look like a normal app before you tap.

Being a web application, it exempts Apple from the rules of Apple’s App Store, the fact that Apple knows itself well – because two weeks ago, Apple actually mentioned the idea in its updated rules. I have bolded the important part:

9.9 Streaming games

Streaming games is allowed as long as they comply with all the guidelines – for example, each game update must be submitted for review, developers must provide the appropriate metadata for search, games features to use the app or purchase Or efficiency etc. must be used. Of course, there are always open internet and web browser apps to reach all users outside the App Store.

Does Amazon use a workaround? So not surprising. Surprisingly, Google, Nvidia, Micro .ft and others have been waiting this long.

Image: Amazon

We’ve known for over a decade that you can play a top-shelf game in a web browser. If I’m exaggerating, it’s only through three months: in December 2010, I wrote about streaming Mass Effect 2 In a web browser on an original Atom powered netbook, using a service that would later morph into Sony’s PlayStation Now.

And Google has been known for eight of the last ten years that a web browser can Native Flow those games too: Before graduating to run the whole company, Sundar Pichai was a demonstrator of that particular thing on Google Stage. Stadia also launched with support for the Chromebook and the Chrome web browser – also with an app on Android and an app that can’t play games on iOS.

Meanwhile, Nvidia’s GeForce has recently jumped on Chromebooks by creating a webRTC version of its app, potentially opening the door to a web browser version on top of its apps for Mac, Windows and Android – a door that is so wide that Is already. Works if you really try. Some Redditters have recently reported that Stadia also works on iOS if you are considering using a web browser that supports it:

There were questions about how well these services run on the web, of course, especially around controller support. And to be sure, if Google, Nvidia and Micro have native apps instead of relying on Microsoft ft web standards, they can improve performance and quality – and, in the case of iOS, Apple Pal must be based on all iOS browsers, depending on the WebKit browser engine. Is. On. (It’s also part of the App Store rules; see 2.5.6.)

But run – that’s enough, apparently, Amazon is ready to hang part of the success of its new Luna platform on iOS web browsers.

With Apple’s instant budget and willingness to show the way forward to Amazon, it’s only a matter of time before others do. Although I’m not sure about microsoft .ft … I’ll explain why in a future story.