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Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

Right, the author just forgot about every game console existing.

And that they were posting on Medium for maximum irony.

You can write a game and all at once target Xbox, Playstation, Switch, PC, MacOS, and Linux. You can do physical releases. You can upload your game anywhere, even provide it for distribution on your own website. Everyone has choice in the equation.

App stores are vampiric parasites and need to be dismantled. Either that, or these companies need their phone monopolies taken away.

And all those platforms have revenue sharing requirements.

You can’t distribute a Switch, PS4, or Xbox One game without giving the respective companies a cut of your sale.

Windows and Mac are the only exceptions, but you won’t get far without publishing to a digital store unless you can afford to drum up a whole lot of name recognition all on your own (also costs money unless you hit the lottery like Mojang did).

Even when you do a physical release - you still have to get the blessing of the console maker and pay a fee.

That is mitigated by the fact that there are so many options. Gaming is an open space with tons of competition. All of the audience isn't glued to a single platform or two controlled by a single entity.

Gaming companies fight to win over gamers and developers. Not so for Apple and Google with their walled fiefdoms.

So instead of two competitors you have four (three consoles and the PC). Three of which have the same “walled garden” that Apple has but with a much larger barrier to entry and much stricter controls?

If you release a game on disc. The retailer + distributer get at least a 50% cut.

But it's not true.

There's absolutely no restriction on game development machines except that the provided tools (probably) only run on Windows.

But you can only sell your Xbox, PS4 or Switch game through Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo (correspondingly), and you have to agree to their terms and pay whatever cut they want to take of your sales price.

Well that by itself is a big restriction.

It's not an intentional one though, it's just what the tools happen to run on. Sony aren't going to come after you if you run their SDK in a VM or something.

Apple intentionally restrict developers to only use Apple hardware and software to keep the ecosystem contained.

And you can build Xamarin apps on Windows. I think the point is more about what you can put on a console, the content restrictions, marketing etc.

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