Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case

Why didn't Microsoft, back in the 90s, have an app store that businesses had to pay for to sell Windows applications in?

I mean, it's certainly not for lack of business insight. And you don't need the internet to sell applications.

> And you don't need the internet to sell applications.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by this? I don't know how you'd sell them otherwise. How do you do you process a payment without a network connection? The only thing I can think of is offering a catalog in the OS which users could browse and physically order stuff from, but I wouldn't call that a store.

Even back then, game console manufacturers had licensing agreements with developers, so those developers had to pay royalties, even though distribution was handled by physical stores.

In some cases, some console manufacturers even handled the manufacturing of cartridges/CDs and the distribution side too.

Sorry, I'm a little confused about the relevance here. Could you elaborate a bit on how it ties into what I was saying? How did the users view products, how did they purchase them, and how did they receive them?

You asked how a company could sell (presumably third-party) apps without internet. I gave an example of it happening. Money-wise the model was very similar to Apple's AppStore.

> How did the users view products, how did they purchase them, and how did they receive them?

For the specific case of games, it was mainly via physical stores but I'm sure there were other methods such as catalogs, especially internationally.

EDIT: Remember GP is talking about the 90s and without internet, so it doesn't mean an app store where the app is instantly in your possession after clicking a button.

> Remember GP is talking about the 90s and without internet, so it doesn't mean an app store where the app is instantly in your possession after clicking a button.

Right, but how is that an app store and not just a catalog?

…am I fully misunderstanding and they just meant a physical store?