Apparently he doesn't have any issues with the walled gardens from game consoles.
I feel Google is doing the bare minimum to avoid antitrust rulings, which they probably do.
Interesting however is the wording of an old version of the Android Market (old name before Play Store came about) developer agreement - the title of 4.5 is labelled "Non-Competition".
I think that title (which has unsurprisingly disappeared from more recent versions) says it all. Sideloading was Google's attempt to avoid an antitrust battle in the early days of Android, as they could say "we are new, anyone can make a store". The trouble is the licensing agreements with OEMs contain all sorts of restrictions, some of which have probably become public over time. Perhaps more will emerge through the epic games lawsuit, as it seems they're going after the restrictions on OEMs. There's many of those they can request through disclosure if they don't have them already!
Ref: https://web.archive.org/web/20150107232223/https://play.goog...
"There’s a rationale for this on console where there's enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers. But on open platforms, 30 per cent is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service."[1]
Low margins on hardware definitely does not apply to Apple (they famously have much higher margins on their devices than their competition), and the (paid) App Store exposure doesn't really match "marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers" either.
Not saying he's completely right, but I can see his reasoning and I don't think he's a hypocrite in this case.
[1]: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-07-31-30-percent...
"out of the goodness of their heart" is also a silly way to characterize this positively or negatively: They want a chance to compete with Apple by offering lower costs in exchange for not offering the same feature set as Apple, just like how the EGS on Windows does not offer the same feature set as Steam. They believe developers will pick them due to the lower cut, but that's something the market would decide. Right now the market can't decide, because Apple has decided to prohibit competition.
Incidentally Epic made a public promise that if Apple lowered the cut, Apple Pay users would get the same Fortnite discount that people paying directly get.
They are just PC spoiled.
You can install games on your PC from any source, and there are over a half-dozen good games distributors you can choose to shop from or sell on. And if none of them work, you can also just buy directly from the developer themselves.
If Apple allowed multiple app stores and sideloading on iOS, but pulled in a few exclusives (ie, Apple Arcade) and banned Fortnite from its official store, that would be equivalent to what Epic is doing on the PC with the Epic Store.
And that is exactly what Epic wants Apple to do -- it's a completely consistent position for them to take.
It is perfectly fine for Epic to focus on suing the companies that are causing them the most trouble right now. Given their relative size compared to these companies, it would be stupid for them to take on everyone at once. They don't have the resources to sue every major player in the entire games industry.
However, the legal question of having a monopoly on publishing for a game console has been settled ages ago, and the platform owners won.
I don't believe it has, and I don't believe they do.
The only lawsuit of this nature that I'm aware of is Atari v. Nintendo [1]. All that lawsuit established was that
- It isn't fair use to violate copyright law in the process of bypassing mechanisms used to maintain the monopoly
- While it might be copyright misuse to create those mechanisms establishing a monopoly in the first place (undecided), the court isn't going to grant you a win when you got in the position you did by lying to the government to steal code.
Notably (as far as I can tell) it established nothing whatsoever about antitrust law, which is what is at issue in this case and presumably what would be at issue in a similar case related to consoles.
Is there another case you are thinking of?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Games_Corp._v._Nintendo_....
Here's a legal analysis that predates the ruling:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/489/
It outlines the requirements for a successful antitrust case, particularly that simply having a monopoly is not enough.
$7 out of $60 game purchase (12%), according to 10-year old https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/...
The problem is that Atari already failed in court against Nintendo back in the eighties, so the chances of winning that suit appear slim.