My 3DS supports savestates & backups for games like Animal Crossing that let me maintain multiple towns at the same time, custom emulators that run my old Gameboy cartridge backups that I made, really amazing mods like Project Restoration for Majora's Mask, plus custom themes and easier storage management for things like pictures and songs. By comparison, an unhacked Switch still can't even back up all of its save games to the cloud.
If you don't want us to go after consoles as well, maybe don't tempt us? I'm sympathetic to the argument that being loss leaders makes consoles unique and special and different from a smartphone, but if the general consensus here is that they're exactly the same...
If you're arguing that this case is a slippery slope, try to come up with some consequences farther down the slope that don't sound kind of nice.
I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that Apple would stop producing the iPhone if sideloading was allowed. The smartphone market doesn't operate the same way as the console market.
The 30% per transaction only really makes sense for apps for which Apple has provided the advertising, distribution and processing -- the App Store.
I'd love to just provide a direct download for my customers who also happen to be Apple (device) customers.
It's not "their" product. It's mine, I purchased a license to use their software on my hardware. I'm not beholden to continue using their software
The App Store, however, is their store.
I also think there are more substantial differences. The most major being the difficulty in switching. Switching consoles means losing my data most of the time, but they're just save games, achievements and friends list. If my console melted down tomorrow, it'd be fine. Switching phone OS is a lot harder. Contacts and calendars are relatively easy to switch, but it gets hard after that. How do I get all my data off the old phone? Am I sure I exported my 2FA keys right? If my phone melts down and takes the cloud backups with it, my life is in a world of hurt.
I am also curious how first-party software will be handled. Is it okay to have a closed marketplace on your own software if that marketplace only serves your software? Just as an example, if I get an LG smart fridge that has a marketplace to download new widgets for the display, and LG only allows the sale of LG apps there, is that okay? I'm wondering if app stores won't just shift their model. Instead of "you upload an app, and we'll pay you what users pay us for it minus our cut" it will become "You grant us a perpetual license to distribute your application, and we will pay you 70% royalties on the money we earn". I wonder if that shifts any liability around
And an inability to play every game you've purchased. Even if you didn't buy the games digitally, it'd be amazingly difficult to resell your games to buy the same ones for a different platform. Heck, just look at all the groaning online about Epic store exclusive games because people didn't want to have to deal with Steam AND Epic launchers.
>I am also curious how first-party software will be handled. Is it okay to have a closed marketplace on your own software if that marketplace only serves your software?
Similarly, why should only Epic be able to sell skins for Fortnite?
Emulators exists (unlike Apple which bans any virtualization of MacOS under non-macs).
>it'd be amazingly difficult to resell your games to buy the same ones for a different platform
Selling is easy. 'Buying the same game' is often a nonfactor due to how the games market works (many games become outdated quickly, multiplayer servers go offline, etc.).
>>Is it okay to have a closed marketplace on your own software if that marketplace only serves your software?
>Similarly, why should only Epic be able to sell skins for Fortnite?
There's no duty to have a open marketplace, that is open to 3rd parties. Not having it is no different than offering different paid versions of the main software (imagine Fortnite Premium Edition with X skins, or iPhone only with Apple apps). However, once the marketplace is open to 3rd parties, there's a duty to allow fair competition, and that does limit Apple.
You can sideload apps with a free dev account for several years now. The only condition is that you have to resign the binary every seven days. There are even desktop apps that automate it.
> AltStore will periodically attempt to refresh your apps in the background, and you can always manually refresh your apps from within AltStore.
This is not how XBox games developed with XDK are actually developed and they can see all the hardware, instead of being into a UWP sandbox.
It is more to cater to indie devs as means to get something into the XBox similar to XNA used to allow, it is not meant for proper XBox games as such.
Also it hasn't been updated for a while.
Eventually the console makers will die due to lack of funding, and Epic will release their own console which will be more locked down than an Apple iPhone.
Microsoft and Playstation also allow for cross-platform play, and crucially unlike Apple, actually provide a significant amount of services to developers for their cuts, including but not limited to QA services, SDK and hardware support from actual MS/Sony employees, and marketing spend.
Additionally, while MS and Sony require all developers to use their stores or APIs for IAP, they allow developers (at least large ones) to heavily customize those storefronts, and charge significantly less than 30% for the enforced privilege of using their IAP APIs; the exact rates being a matter of negotiation.
Sony explicitly didn't allow for cross-play until 2 years ago [https://kotaku.com/sony-is-finally-allowing-cross-play-on-th...], even though it was technically possible before then [https://www.engadget.com/2017-06-24-rocket-league-cross-netw...]. In fact, the only reason Sony opened up to cross-play is due to pressure to stay competitive with rival platform Xbox. This was a take-it-or-leave it situation, but Sony was too big to leave. Nothing changed until Sony caved to social pressure.
If the argument is that Apple is a unique kind of device that Apple has a monopoly over, it would hard to argue that Sony and Microsoft don't enjoy the same monopoly powers. On the other hand, if argument is that it's easy enough to switch from Playstation to Xbox, then how is that different from buying a new phone?
In fact, I would bet that Epic sued Apple not because it's more monopolistic, but because they want to set a legal precedent that they can then apply to Playstation, Xbox and Switch, without threatening Epic's core business on consoles.
Would you be willing to agree that the relative importance of a smartphone in 2020 is far greater than the relative importance of a video game console in virtually everyone’s lives?
Nor does Fortnite.
Rather easily: players can own two consoles with nothing more than the hardware investment, and there's a long social experience of dedicated gamers doing just this. Owning two phones, however, requires two separate cell/data plans and duplication of every other regular-use app (productivity, e-mail, etc.)
The core distinction is that a console is a device, whereas iOS/Android is a platform.
multiple console platforms require multiple accounts with separate friends lists, paid online access, save games, etc. with WiFi calling, separate cell/data plans are not necessary. [1]
> The core distinction is that a console is a device, whereas iOS/Android is a platform.
a console gaming platform certainly seems like a platform. games, friends list with chat, applications such as video streaming, etc.
[1] https://thedroidguy.com/trick-drop-cell-phone-plan-completel...
I can't run my Switch copy of Warframe on my PS4. I have to install Warframe for PS4 on the PS4, and then I'll be playing only with other Warframe-on-PS4 players.
Similarly for every paid title I have on the PS4 if I move to Switch I have to buy those titles again, assuming they're available on the Switch. Many of the titles I have on Switch require a Nintendo Online account which is a paid service.
So I'm not sure what you think you're addressing with that comparison, other than desperately trying to find evidence to support your assertion that iPhone is somehow different to a gaming console in terms of being a platform or device.
But in that scenario, you can always walk out and walk into a competing grocery store and try to find a better price. The fact that you can walk is what makes it a competitive scenario, and not an anti-trust one. The question here is, is being able to walk away and use an Android (or other smartphone) product an equivalent (thus fair competition) - or is software in the iOS ecosystem unique enough that not being allowed to participate unless you follow arcane rules is unfair abuse of a monopoly.
I don’t understand how this is materially different from apples investments into Xcode, discoverability & promotion in the App Store/“marketing spend”, etc. Apple does tons of stuff with the big players behind closed doors, they highlight it every keynote and that’s just the ones they talk about on the “real human being” front.
> Microsoft and Playstation also allow for cross-platform play
Don't some games allow iOS / PC cross-platform play? Epic's Fortnite did, didn't it?
Appendix A1 (page 16) here https://www.analysisgroup.com/globalassets/insights/publishi...
It seems to run counter to everything I've heard when people compare the iOS ecosystem to consoles. Where can I learn more?
Console ecosystems are already open-by-law, based on past cases from the 80s and 90s. You can already publish a game to a Switch or PlayStation without ever going through Nintendo or Sony (so long as you don't steal any copywritten assets to do so). You can even publish your own software, that modifies anyone elses software (again, so long as you don't break copyright to do so).
Their eShop/online stores are not yet open, but the devices main software sources are open by law (things like the BluRay drive on a PS4, or the Cartridge slot on a Switch). This is how things like "unauthorized games" were legally published, as well as software editors/debuggers like GameShark, all existed 100% legally as far back as the 90's.
Apple is actually attempting to overturn precedent here, they're trying to claim their TOS is somehow more legally binding than everyone elses is, and trying to reverse battles already fought and lost by Atari / Nintendo / Sega, because companies didn't have easy way to retroactively punish users for fair use back then, like Apple can and does do today.
As far as I know, the courts didn't require that Nintendo, Sega or Sony make the consoles open - they just didn't make it illegal to reverse engineer the protections.
I'm curious what cases you think actually established this precedent? Keep in mind that a court saying "reverse engineering is not copyright infringement" is not the same thing as a court saying "a hardware manufacturer is legally obligated to permit the distribution of third-party software on its hardware".
> You can already publish a game to a Switch or PlayStation without ever going through Nintendo or Sony (so long as you don't steal any copywritten assets to do so).
I don't believe this is accurate, at least not in the sense of commercially publishing a game in a physical store or on Nintendo or Sony's digital storefronts. I'm certainly not aware of any games that have been published in physical stores without the publisher having signed a publishing agreement with Nintendo or Sony.
They did put commercial unlicensed software into US retailers, without any agreement from Nintendo or Sony.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade (1992) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nin.... (1992)
(TL/DR: you are allowed to build and publish and sell unlicensed software for a console. You are allowed to break DRM to do this, so long as it's a clean-room reverse engineer (don't pull a TENGEN). You are allowed to do this for your own uses (sell your own games) and are allowed to do this even if that software edits other people's legally-purchased software (cheat engines / debuggers / mods / etc). You can legally do this without any license agreement from Nintendo or Sony)
This is how GameSharks/ActionReplays/etc were legally sold in every Wal*Mart / Target / Meijer / GameStop / etc in the US for a decade or more. Their boot screens all contain boot messages saying "this product is NOT licensed by Nintendo/Sega/Sony/etc" for this reason - https://nerdbacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/GS3.jpg
These are still sold, legally at retail stores like GameStop and WalMart, even today: https://www.codejunkies.com/Products/PowerSaves-Pro__EF00111... (again, still 100% unlicensed from Nintendo)
But it doesn't mean those platforms are "open", otherwise under that definition the iOS platform is "open" too because you can legally jailbreak your phone and distribute jailbroken apps. I don't think that's what people mean when they say a platform is "open".
> This is how GameSharks/ActionReplays/etc were legally sold
I was more curious if any actual games had been sold this way.
copyrighted
I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you don't actually need to do that to be legal. You just have to clean room reverse engineer the DRM. After that, anything you have legal access to, you can legally use.
You could just get past the DRM on the BluRay drive or SD card slot or whatever, and then assuming you have legal rights to use it, load up a full set of Unreal/Unity/Renderware/whatever middleware you want and be off to the races.
Again: This caselaw pre-dates always-on-DRM and Apple-angry-tantrum-responses stuff. So this stuff was 100% legal and clear in the PS2 / Xbox / GameCube days, when there was a clear separation between the two. Now that Apple has tried to muddy the water by pretending their DRM is a "platform" that "provides value", I suspect it will be easier to confuse folks
I'm not convinced that the console ecosystem would be destroyed if you forced them all to open up. Quite the contrary: I'd happily invest in consoles if I could build it myself with open hardware.
Did opening up destroy the PC market? No. But opening up another console market probably would destroy it; there's no reason to separate a hypothetical new PC market from the old PC market. So if you have a PC market and a PS4 market, and then you open the PS4, you have a PC market and another PC market, and then you just have the PC market.
Eh.. no, I think this is reductive.
In addition to being closed PCs, consoles are also an OS and collection of services that make playing games easier and make the process of configuring the device easy.
They also often come with unique hardware (3DS, Wii U, Switch, Vita) that offer dedicated features that don't make sense on PCs.
Most importantly, consoles are standardized PCs. It's not that they're closed, it's that if a game says it works on the Switch, and you have a Switch, that's it. That's all you need to know. PCs offer a lot more complication because there are multiple hardware variations and because the OS isn't specially designed to provide a lot of dedicated frameworks and interfaces to make running games and taking advantage of the hardware easy.
I don't think any of those benefits would go away if 3rd-parties were allowed to make compatible games without asking permission.
It would be a lot harder to loss-lead the hardware, sure. And it would maybe have some implications for quality-control if anyone could start selling unplayable games at Walmart. I'm sympathetic to those arguments.
But I think it's reductive to say that the only reason anyone would ever buy a console is because it's a closed market.
Yes, I'm familiar with the economic reasons for the existence of consoles. But look at the parent comment:
>>> I'd happily invest in consoles if I could build it myself with open hardware.
And poof, all the benefits of standardization are gone. This is just an ordinary PC. You put in the parts you want. And developers suddenly have to support every part anyone might want.
> I don't think any of those benefits would go away if 3rd-parties were allowed to make compatible games without asking permission.
As I read inetknght, he's talking about making the hardware open, not letting people sell games for it.
My apologies, I misread inetknght's comment.
Agreed, a user-built console without any standardization is just a PC, maybe with a different OS.
I disagree about unique hardware not making sense on PCs. Can you provide examples? 3DS and Vita are about the size of a raspberry pi and with some added sensors and controllers. The Wii's controller is pretty similar to the HTC Vive's wand which connects to a PC just fine.
> consoles are standardized PCs. It's not that they're closed, it's that if a game says it works on the Switch, and you have a Switch, that's it. That's all you need to know.
PC games often provide minimum/recommended requirements. PC games often compiled for the x86 or x86_64 architecture just the same as most modern consoles use. Rendering APIs, hardware controllers, and sensors are all standardized. What more do you need?
> PCs offer a lot more complication because there are multiple hardware variations and because the OS isn't specially designed to provide a lot of dedicated frameworks and interfaces to make running games and taking advantage of the hardware easy.
No; I absolutely and fully disagree. The OS provides an operating system. Consumer operating systems are specifically designed to provide a lot of dedicated frameworks and interfaces to make running any software and take advantage of any hardware.
Xbox uses x86 based hardware. The same goes for PS4. Modern controllers are well known to be just simply USB or bluetooth, both of which have PC interfaces. The only thing that ties games to a console is the proprietary vendor-locked API.
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go/
The fact is that besides some enthusiasts no one into games for money cares that they exist.
Sure, you could create these things in a PC format, but what I'm getting at is that nobody has. They don't make sense in the current PC market. Selling games that need special non-universal peripherals is really hard. Not impossible (Guitar hero pulled it off), but very difficult.
The HTC Vive is a good example of that. It's about as close to a general peripheral as you can get on the current market (and even it strays irritatingly close to "platform" status). But VR is a wildly niche market. It's nowhere near the market penetration of the 3DS or Wii.
I don't mean that those peripherals can't be built for PC, I mean that we don't have compelling evidence that it makes sense to build them primarily targeting PCs.
> to make running any software and take advantage of any hardware.
You can tune a game way more if you're not targeting 'any' hardware -- it's a lot easier if you're targeting one piece of hardware that works one way.
Take a look at the incredible work that emulators like Citra and Dolphin are doing right now. Reverse engineering the API is only one piece of that puzzle, another big challenge is dealing with the games that are designed to take advantage of hardware quirks and undocumented behaviors.
It's a huge simplification to say that those emulators/games are just based on the API and nothing else. They're often emulating wildly specific behaviors that wouldn't be standardized across multiple implementations of the same API on multiple pieces of hardware. That's why its a such a huge engineering challenge to build an emulator in the first place -- you're constantly balancing accuracy and performance, figuring out when you need to load and emulate specific hardware features.
> Rendering APIs, hardware controllers, and sensors are all standardized. What more do you need?
If you make a game for Switch today, you need to target one aspect ratio at two resolutions, and a very small, finite set of controller layouts. If you tried to release a PC game with those kinds of restrictions, you'd be laughed out of the market.
As someone who's currently working on supporting multiple controllers for a PC game, it's really stinking annoying. Even aftermarket XBox controllers will occasionally just report entirely separate button layouts depending on the OS they're being used with. I can't even just read the hardware codes and base the layout on that, I have controllers that map buttons differently depending on whether I'm in Ubuntu or Manjaro. Libraries like SDL2 help a bit with that, but even then the situation isn't perfect and you often end up making multiple control schemes that degrade gracefully when features are missing.
And from a consumer perspective, minimum requirements for PCs aren't really a scientific thing. People don't know what their GPUs are, they don't have that information in front of them when they go to a store. They buy games as gifts for other people who's PCs they've never seen.
Compare all that to, "does Billy have the Wii U? Cool, then Smash Bros will just work on it."
You could have something like that in the PC space if everybody got together and we had industry-wide standardization on certain requirements or parts for PCs, I can imagine that existing. But it doesn't exist right now, and it's not clear to me that most PC game developers would want that (I wouldn't), and it's not clear to me that current PC-gamers want that (I don't).
It's not a propriety vs Open thing. If someone wants to make a console that has all of its specs completely open and uses off the shelf parts, then fine. Consumers won't care either way. Consumers care about being able to look at exactly one logo on a game disk that indicates the game will play perfectly on every device that shares that logo.
The PC market is not even close to that goal, you're greatly overestimating how standardized even the average Windows install is, and that gets even worse once we start talking about more freedom-friendly OSes like Linux.
And the claim that consoles are just closed down PCs is absurd. Consoles can play AAA games at a fraction of the cost of your average PC. The hardware that goes into building a console is significantly different than a PC.
there was a time when consoles didnt require internet tethering, were media capable, and could be used for common PC tasks.
Still are. I watch nearly all my TV through my PS4.
If consoles were not price subsidized like now, their prices would go up and sales would be affected. Presumably there'd just be fewer people who could afford to buy the latest one. You might see lower or higher specs in consoles since the market would be a little more niche. Xbox might merge fully into Windows 10 and the line between console and gamer PC may disappear.
At the very least, I think we can all agree that the console ecosystem would change. Maybe "destroy" is too strong, but maybe not.
Mobile phones are how many individuals interface with the rest of the world.
Not to mention your case gets worse when there are way less restrictions on releasing games on Xbox/PlayStation/Switch than on iOS.
In other words, Xbox is already more open than iOS. I believe they opened it up with the Xbox 360 around 2007. https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers#developerprograms
It took months of back and forth and the Xbox team had plenty of input from UX, to monetization, particularly when it came to users buying stuff on other platforms and using them on Xbox.
Sure, MS let us do what Sony and Nintendo would not, so I guess they're the most "open", but make no mistake, it's Microsoft's platform.
Consoles should also be forced to open up though, and there's no reason why that would "destroy the console ecosystem". They might have to raise the prices of the consoles, but everyone has to do it so it won't matter, and the consoles can also either be financed or monthly fees for online play can be increased.
Consoles opening up would be a good thing. I'm not sure why you say it would destroy their ecosystem.
Truth is Xbox does have independent developer programs and you can sideload games.
UWP runs in a sandbox castrated XBox environment.
> For games development, Xbox One, like other games consoles, is a specialized piece of hardware that requires a specific hardware-based development kit to access its full potential. If you are working on a game that requires access to the maximum potential of the Xbox One hardware, consider registering with the ID@Xbox program to get access to an Xbox One development kit.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/syste...
Truth is, iOS has the same. You have been able to sideload apps on iOS, without paying for a developer account, for years.
It need to at least be persistent or it didn't count.
Except you don’t! I really recommend looking at AltStore before judging the convenience based on how things were years ago when you last had the whim to look.
> AltStore will periodically attempt to refresh your apps in the background, and you can always manually refresh your apps from within AltStore.
It's not solution, it is workaround for the apple's creepy behavior.
Because you don’t want solutions, you just want to complain about Apple not doing exactly what you want when you want. Apple’s not your company if you expect them to cater to your whims, that’s never been their MO (for better or for worse).
> apple's creepy behavior
Really?
How is this true? Consoles predate app stores by many decades.
This is whataboutism for sure.
It moves the discussion to a less constructive, more re-hashed place.
Consoles are different because they're not sold as general purpose computing devices and do not have the market penetration size that iOS does.
There is a great argument for allowing all consumers to install whatever software they want on all devices they purchased - including consoles - by law. I'd like to see this - for over a decade, a lot of tech communities have pushed for this - but this isn't the conversation we're having today.
iOS is only 20% of the global smartphone market, PS 4 outperforms it on world market share.
I don't believe any of those vendors take anything close to 30% of in-game revenue. And the reason is they compete with each other, quite vigorously, for the same set of users looking for the same set of products (consoles and games).
> or classify iOS as somehow different...
Right, because Apple is leveraging their dominance of an external market (high end mobile phones) to control pricing in the game market that "should" be more akin to consoles. But it demonstrably isn't. And that is a problem.
If you want to argue here, the proper argument is that iOS isn't a monopoly (and that Google charges similar fees). But don't argue that it's the same as a console, that just doesn't make sense.
Worked for one of the worlds largest video games publishers for 6+ years. Now I work for the largest games publisher in the world, so, if anyone would get a discount for being big it would be us.
It’s 30% platform fee for sales on the PlayStation or xbox platforms, 70k eur/y developer fee (and you still have to buy hardware which is double sometimes triple price from the consumer stuff).
Valve has the same 30% and the same “non-compete” w.r.t discounts on other platforms.
This is pretty standard, and is one of the reasons why people tend to release on epic or steam and not both.
The Microsoft store takes a mere 5%.
The Epic Games Store is at... 12% I believe. There's also no exclusivity from either Steam or EGS. The only condition is not using Steam to promote a game that will release first on EGS.
Although, while we had good relationships with Microsoft at Ubisoft on a technical basis- I'm not sure about the business arrangement. If Valve is any indication then it was likely incredibly hostile.
Epic does only take 12%, it's an outlier, and is gaining traction because of it.
For publishers/developers getting a special deal, there's just no upside to sharing that information, even internally.
Since I can see total unit sales and total income and it’s broken down on SKU- then it would have been easy for me to see a discrepancy from what I was told our deals were by my masters at HQ but there never was one.
I think you assume too much of executives, they are consumers of our work, they don’t create any reports or such themselves.
A console is designed for a specific task (playing games and similar software), the market is somewhat competitive and you are free to buy a PC/Mac/Linux and get 99% of the functionality (minus a few exclusive titles). In fact consoles nowadays are just PCs running a custom build of a general-purpose OS.
The mobile market is different. There are only 2 dominant players (Apple and Google), they both have similar anti-competitive restrictions (side-loading on Android is a non-starter given the various security warnings, and even then the lack of officially-supported root access on Android means there are things official Google software can do that you can't do without resorting to exploits, plus Android requires you to accept Google's terms & privacy policy which does not comply with the GDPR). There are no other players; the open-source alternatives such as Pinephone are not viable alternatives as they cut you off from the vast majority of apps out there. Let's take a period-correct example, are there any Covid contact-tracing clients available for platforms besides iOS and Android?
There's a reason alternatives to iOS and Android haven't picked up, some of those reasons are because for those that care to side load apps they can already do it on Android (or can go further and replace their OS) so not much incentive for a third mobile OS. If there was a strong enough need for an alternative then that would exist already.
Google has hindered Android so that it doesn't allow third party app stores to install apps in the background, upgrade apps or batch install apps like the Play Store can.