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Comment by BryantD | Hacker News Reader

Mobile gaming and PC gaming are somewhat different markets. In particular, mobile game development companies don't have any choice but to work with Apple and Google, whereas AAA PC gaming companies have another outlet already.

I like Apple and I like their products but I think if you talk to any sizable mobile developer they'd be able to tell you stories about the difficulties of working with Apple.

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Most of the "sizable" mobile developers are entangled in the PC/Console game developers if in no other place than on the broad sheet with one generating revenue to pay for the increasingly expensive other. King is a part of Activision Blizzard (and a part of the pending sale to Microsoft). Zynga is a part of Take-Two (Rockstar/2K). Riot is obviously Riot. A half-dozen others are arms of Tencent in one way or another, who in turn is heavily invested in Funcom and Epic and Riot and From Software and less invested but still invested in plenty more like Ubisoft. NetEase is a mobile developer and publisher that also develops (but so far generally doesn't publish) PC and console games and has been buying studios looking to deepen that.

The list goes on; everything videogames is deeply entangled financially. Therefore, the markets must be deeply entangled, too.

I have to wonder if that’s because a lot of the hot mobile gaming companies flew too close to the sun, could not maintain their explosive growth even as they pursued F2P microtransactions hell policies, and ended up getting bought by said PC/console game developers.

My theory reverses your theory's cause and effect: King was a reverse merger that was very nearly a takeover of Activision Blizzard at the time. Zynga was thought to be the same for Take-Two (which at the time was particularly bloodied by bankruptcy-related issues and in a position to be eaten). The EA and Popcap merger is another one that was questionably a reverse merger/near takeover, especially in the way it shook up the executive board at the time. (I forgot about Popcap in the above summary because as a brand to themselves they've quietly sort of disappeared from modern mobile trends, but their logo still often shows up in EA presentations.)

In general, "lowly" mobile gaming still has more active players spending more real-world money at any given time. It's very hard not looking at the bottom lines of some of these companies, especially today's weird Activision Blizzard and not see "the tail wagging the dog" and mobile games effectively sponsoring and/or subsidizing development costs on every other form factor of videogame. The biggest exceptions seem to be Sony and Microsoft themselves, and Microsoft dabbled in mobile gaming over the years, has a big mobile gaming contractor in Arkadium (using the Microsoft brand for Solitaire and Minesweeper, among others, and generating some revenue), and does own one of the largest mobile games of all time (Minecraft) though people often don't think of it as such.

I think it also shows up in executive leadership and how F2P microtransactions hell has been infesting "AAA" and "AA" PC/console development for years now.

From my outside perspective of the industry: "Mobile games" won. PC/console games are the weird, "too expensive" afterthought for most of the videogame industry, subsidized by and beholden to the mobile games. The "gamer culture" that doesn't see most of the mobile games space as interesting or important and doesn't see mobile game players as "gamers" (or worse sees them only as "filthy casuals") is the minority out of touch with market realities.

Admittedly, that's a somewhat extreme perspective and there are plenty of exceptions and gray area and further complications. But whether or not you agree with that perspective, my earlier point remains that overall mobile games and PC/console games are inextricably linked by market forces and treating them as separate markets, and especially treating the mobile games market as somehow inferior, misses a lot of the forest.

(That [currently] Cold War between Apple and Epic has very real stakes, including for PC/consoles, and isn't just a silly "mobile gaming" problem.)

Sure. But it’s about the distribution platform, not the game company financials. Selling games that must be distributed on specific app stores is very different than selling games which are distributed through multiple channels; in the former case, your distributor has a much stronger effect on your ability to make money.

> if you talk to any sizable mobile developer they'd be able to tell you stories about the difficulties of working with Apple

If you're a sizable game developer used to working with Sony or Nintendo, how much harder is it to work with Apple?

For pure mobile devs, how much harder is it to work with Apple vs. Google, and why? If it isn't worth it, why bother? Android seems to have larger market share. How much higher are Apple's platform fees vs. Google's?

I don't think fees are a viable argument anymore. At least not at face value. Last I looked, Google, Apple and Valve all take 30% cuts. I believe Nintendo does too. Unless there are some backroom sweet heart deals at least with the major studios.

My experience is somewhat dated so I can’t say if this is still the truth, but Apple used to refuse to tell the very large company I worked at whether or not their new game would be featured before the featuring page was updated. Getting onto the featured page was critical for initial success. And you just didn’t know what to plan for.

Don't PC gaming companies have only one real outlet (Microsoft) to work with? Not to be confused with distribution channels such as Steam.

Are there still games that only come out on PC? I thought most big titles are released on Xbox and Playstation as well?

Not many. For example, Jagged Alliance 3 and the Total War series.

I'm a big fan of Zachtronics games (TIS-100, Shenzen I/O, etc) and they are also PC-only.

Positech Games (Democracy Series) are PC only.

Well I’m not sure I’d draw a meaningful difference between Xbox and PC in this context, but at best you’d then just have two channels: Sony and Microsoft (Xbox/PC) so it’s no different than Apple and Google.

But specifically for computer channels there’s effectively just one: Windows PC.

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