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LurkerJ on 25 August 2020
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padib said:
LurkerJ said:

Is Nintendo monopolistic for charging developers 30% over eShop sales? eShop is the only option on the Switch after, worse, unlike iOS, the Switch remains unchallenged by an Android-like competitor in the handheld-gaming space (and crushing competitors in the console space but that's irrelevant for the sake of this topic now )

Nintendo's overall marketshare for games is too small relatively speaking. Also, iOS is a multi-function OS, so it encompasses everything from Productivity apps to leasure software.

In other words, you're drawing lines where it's convenient for you to draw them?

If anything, the fact that iOS allows you to do a lot more than just gaming and without charging the consumers or the developers most of the time, makes iOS a lot friendlier environment to developers than eShop.

  • Apps that are free to you aren’t charged by Apple.
  • Apps that earn revenue exclusively through advertising — like free games & Youtube — aren’t charged by Apple.
  • App business transactions where users sign up or purchase digital goods outside the app aren’t charged by Apple (including Spotify).
  • Apps that sell physical goods — including ride-hailing and food delivery services, to name a few — aren’t charged by Apple
  • 84 percent of the apps in the App Store pay nothing to Apple when you download or use the app

And again, this laser-focus criticism of Apple when they only have less than 25% market share globally makes no sense whatsoever.

To clarify, I don't believe the Switch is a monopoly for creating the sole exciting handheld environment that devs profit from, because that environment wouldn't have existed without their product in the first place.