The desktop games market is much heathier and less dangerous for users than the mobile app market.
I'll happily have to deal with a few extra launchers on PC in comparison to what the alternative is.
This is where I see how long that battle will be.
The future where this "extremely annoying" situation is fully solved is Xbox XXX being un removable and the only Game Store allowed on any PC sold, with legal threats to anyone jailbreaking.
As long as user have a choice and control on their device, and competition is alive, we'll hopefuly have different stores with different rules and you'll be extremely annoyed I think.
Is it? I regularly use Steam, Epic and XBox and occasionally Ubi, Larian and whatever the GoG one is called... and it's fine. It's just another program.
Competition is awesome.
Down with all “stores”!
You pay such a high price for living in the walled garden. I honestly can't imagine why you would _want_ it.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum...
Choices are great and have resulted in far better services.
The problem is tying the content to the platform. All studios should be required to license their content under RAND terms to all other streaming platforms. Then the streaming platforms can actually compete on objective measures like price, reliability, video quality, offline watching, etc.
In this case I don't think we've gotten better services. I still believe that the gold standard for a streaming app has been Netflix (well, at least until a few years ago; it's started going downhill IMO). All the others have significant problems, whether with reliability or quality, or with UX. They've certainly gotten better over time, but I don't think I'd consider any of them pleasant to use.
For the longest time, legally, movie studios could not own movie theaters. We correctly recognized that the studios should not have a monopoly on where and how their content is distributed. Unfortunately I believe that law has expired or been repealed recently. We're going in the wrong direction. We need more laws like that, and we need them to apply to streaming platforms too.
cool. and Netflix's binge culture works against them for subscribers who only want one show. A new season hits and I can spend $10-20 to watch it and leave.
It will depend on your perspective. If you watch a bunch of TV and movies everyday then you got a worse deal. But it also makes sense you'd pay more than me, who's last venture was 1 month of Paramount for the Knuckles Show (and I didn't even pay. I went to a friend's place).
>We correctly recognized that the studios should not have a monopoly on where and how their content is distributed. Unfortunately I believe that law has expired or been repealed recently. We're going in the wrong direction.
I mean, it's not like the current endgame of AMC or Cinemark has turned out better. I paid $14 for the saddest hot dog I had ever eaten earlier in the year. someone will always try to fleece you if they have the chance.
Hard disagree. The rate of quality content that I actually want to watch is no higher than it was back when I could view it all on Netflix, but the difference now is that in order to watch it all I'd have to have four different subscription channels.
I'm honestly not even sure the content quality isn't lower now that everyone is producing it with the idea of selling their still-unprofitable streaming platform. Amazon sinks a billion dollars per season into Rings of Power and it shows—the showrunners are visibly torn between trying to tell a compelling story and trying to meet executives' demands that they compete with HBO and milk the Peter Jackson connections for all they're worth.
I don't need everything all in one place. Piracy was always the cheapest option if you wanted to spend time fiddling, but the current official means is much more convenient than the cable contract lock-in days.
I got an iPhone so that I wouldn't have to deal with the Android ecosystem. I go to the app store, install an app, and get on with my life.
If every store had to make every app available, then sure I'd have choice and maybe that could be super cool.
But nobody's talking about that. We're talking about a world where major corporations will make their apps available only through their own stores and can refuse to do refunds and make canceling subscriptions a nightmare.
I don't see any increased choice at all. All I see is corporations forcing their own stores, that will probably be far less consumer-friendly, and users won't have any increased choice at all.
We'll probably see 3-4 major stores that manage to get enough mindshare for people to actually install them, and a lot of apps available on a 2-ish-store subset of them.
For example, Google Maps isn't limited to Android, even though it could drive more Android sales. Instead, it's available on iOS because the potential market loss outweighs the benefits of exclusivity.
Companies are unlikely to limit apps to their own stores if the cost of shrinking their user base is too high. The key factor will be whether consumers are willing to switch platforms for specific apps.
In contrast, installing another app store is just a few taps. Consumers want the app, and then will be forced into a situation where they've got 10 or 15 different app stores installed to support the 20 apps they use, because no corporation wants another corporation taking a percentage of payments or controlling app review.
It will be lovely.
So use the built-in app store, like you are doing today.
The possible future where that plan goes off the rails is if developers start pulling their software off the App Store and stop following Apple’s rules because they can. Right now they can’t while remaining iPhone developers.
Like I said, there’s a lot that’s a dumpster fire with developer relations between Apple and App Store developers, but you always know where Apple stands:
1. Apple
2. Apple’s Customers
3. Developers
Yeah I’d like them to loosen up some of the restrictions, but it’s still to my advantage as an iPhone customer that developers who choose to develop for iPhones from the smallest to the very largest to even the government are forced to deal with Apple on Apple’s terms to distribute software.
Apple’s dumpster fire in developer relations is also only half the story over the last decade; a lot of the largest developers of the most popular apps on the App Store have also been at the forefront of innovating new and creative ways to try and circumvent even the smallest limitations on iPhones leading to Apple spending the better part of the decade coming up with new APIs, new entitlements and new legal contracts walking this tightrope between enabling or keeping enabled useful APIs while also protecting user privacy and security. It’s not an easy task they’ve taken up, and short of the government literally outlawing most of the surveillance-oriented business practices a lot of Apple’s peers engage in (practices which the government also benefits from), this is basically the next best thing.
Given current lawsuits, Valve does neither.
Imagine if Spotify had a Spotify store that required device id tracking for their ad network.
I’m pretty sure the likes of Adobe and Meta would be literally foaming at the mouth in excitement over the potential for this.
Epic could already to their own Play Store, but they didn't/couldn't. Freaking Amazon had their app store and they failed. Samsung also has their own App Store and how many non-Samsung phones run it?
What users got: 1000 streaming services each with their app and UX that is shitty in a slightly different way from the other, and with a catalog that keeps changing unpredictably.
I'm a bit surprised a community as tech savvy as this has frustrations over the idea of using multiple platforms. decentralization by its nature means you'll have fragmentation of content. But it protects against the worse ending of Youtube price hiking mulitple times a year and doubling down on adblock users.
If you want to watch the Lion King, Disney has your balls in a vice grip.
I would be perfectly fine with a hundred different UXes, if they could all serve me Lion King and I had an option to pay for it. Then it would be an actual decentralization. A syndicated system where I can access a movie or song on any platform (of my choice), and the copyright holder gets paid appropriately would be an approach most people in the tech savvy community would be happy with.
For all the noise journalists and the justice department make about big tech, there is basically ZERO action taken about the monopolization of IP that media houses indulge in.
The EU has a lot of well-meaning laws, but create quite the mess of unintended consequences.
Realistically, this never happens. making a platform isn't some cheap endeavor like a landing page for a website. Most people will stay on the play store and use play services. Those with more skin will consider alternative stores, and then lastly some will make their own platforms.
It's a strange strategy to me, but I guess I may underestimate however many people will just stick to whatever pops up first.