While having Epic Store, Fortnite "mini store", and being perfectly fine with Nintendo, Sony and XBox.
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Why? Because a console is bought as a gaming device. And because you can reasonably have multiple consoles and there’s healthy competition between them.
In comparison, people buy a phone to have a phone. Then the App Store lock-in is tacked on the side. iPhone and Android compete on who has the best cameras. But once you’ve bought your phone, you’re trapped in the manufacturer’s App Store, who can charge monopolistic pricing. And normal people don’t buy multiple phones for different app stores.
The App Store monopoly is like if your electricity company somehow made it so you could only buy an Xbox. Games on steam and PlayStation aren’t compatible with the electricity in your house. And your friend down the street could only use a PlayStation. Not for any technical reason, but simply because locking you in to a single console manufacturer means they can make you pay way more for games. And you’ll pay it, because you don’t have a choice and can’t shop around.
The problem comes about because phones and app stores are glued together. They use a captive market created by one part of the business to trap consumers and developers elsewhere. If Google and Apple had to compete on app stores - like how Nintendo, PlayStation and Microsoft have to compete - then there’s no way Apple could get away with charging their extortionate 28% for App Store sales. If chrome charged a 28% commission on all purchases I made through the browser, everyone would switch to Firefox. Apps on my phone should be more like that.
Consoles run more "commodity hardware" than phones, like CPUs and GPUs and standard ports etc.
For what it’s worth, I agree with the argument that if I buy a computer it should let me run arbitrary code. But there’s no laws against that. There are laws about monopolies. I see that as a much stronger way to attack Apple over their behaviour here.