Comment by smachiz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smachiz | Hacker News Reader

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What about in app payments in XBox or PS4? It will not surprise you to know they also take 30%.

I can't help but notice that Fortnite is also available in the PS4 store as well.

This is simply Epic doing their own money grab against the the platform they can most afford to alienate:

  >The documents show that from March 2018 to July 2020, the 
  >breakdown of Fortnite revenue by platform was as follows:

  >PS4: 46.8%  
  >Xbox One: 27.5%  
  >Android, Switch, PC: 18.7%  
  >iOS: 7%

This is a flyer for Epic to try to take a bigger percentage from their ecosystem partners and devalue them. Commoditize your complement. And they simply started with the one they could afford to alienate.

I don't have links handy but Sweeny directly addressed this. Sony and Microsoft are willing to negotiate with Epic. They get to find a middleground that both sides are happy with. Apple does not negotiate, a developer that has $5 in sales get's the same deal as Epic. Sweeny stated that if Apple had been willing to negotiate similar to Microsoft and Sony then we wouldn't be here.

If Apple had negotiated with Epic, we'd all be arguing about how unfair it is that Epic gets a better deal than everyone else.

Eh, we'd probably just have kept buying Fortnite skins and never have heard about this to begin with.

If nothing else, Epic managed to lower in-app commissions for small indie devs, which is a small win at least.

That's a good point. Not a big Apple fan, in fact I hate most what they do, but for that particular thing I don't agree with Epic. Those things are anti-competetive and hurt everyone else.

Apple does negotiate. See Netflix and Amazon.

> What about in app payments in XBox or PS4? It will not surprise you to know they also take 30%.

What about it? It's the same kind of anticompetitive practice. Except that Apple devices are used by billions every day across whole software market and consoles are entertainment devices used with much narrower market impact. Punishing them is less urgent.

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